LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 

Class 


THE    PRESENT   SOUTH 


^^^^ 


•9-^^  o 


/  o    o 


PROBLEMS   OF 
THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 


A   DISCUSSION  OF 

CERTAIN   OF  THE   EDUCATIONAL,   INDUSTRIAL 

AND   POLITICAL   ISSUES   IN  THE 

SOUTHERN    STATES 


BY 

EDGAR   GARDNER   MURPHY 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1904 

All  rights  reserved 


f^^^ 


Copyright,    i  904, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up,  electrotyped,  and  published  March,  1904. 


Norivood  Press 

y.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berivick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.f  U.S.A. 


^0  IHg  Sons 

DU  BOSE   AND   GARDNER 
MURPHY 


■225380 


PREFACE 

With  two  exceptions,  the  papers  here  included 
have  been  prepared  for  this  volume  and  have  not 
heretofore  appeared  in  print.  Even  in  these  excep- 
tional instances  the  chapters  have  attained  only  a 
small  private  circulation,  and  they  are  here  presented 
in  a  somewhat  altered  form.  While,  therefore,  the 
volume  is  thus  so  largely  and  so  directly  representa- 
tive of  matter  that  has  not  before  found  its  way  to 
print,  I  am  aware  that  certain  repetitions  will  be 
noted.  These  are  chiefly  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
book  has  but  one  essential  theme,  and  that  each 
chapter  is  an  attempt  —  from  a  somewhat  different 
point  of  view  —  to  discuss  this  one  subject.  The 
volume  is  an  effort  to  contribute,  from  a  standpoint 
within  the  life  and  thought  of  the  South,  to  the 
discussion  of  the  rise  of  democratic  conditions  in  our 
Southern  States.  The  problems  of  the  South  —  in- 
dustrial, educational,  political — appear  as  phases  of 
the  essential  movement  toward  a  genuinely  demo- 
cratic order. 

The  limitations  of  space  have  made  it  necessary 
to  postpone  the  discussion  of  some  of  the  topics 
which  it  seemed  desirable  to  include.  Chapters 
upon  "The  Negro  Tax  and  the  Negro  School,"  — 
a  more  explicit  discussion  of  the  proposal  to  accord 
to  the  negro  schools  only  the  amount  collected  from 


viii  PREFACE 

negro  taxes;  "The  South  and  the  Amendments,"  — 
a  criticism  of  the  proposal  to  enforce  the  terms  of 
the  Fourteenth  and  Fifteenth  Amendments  by  Con- 
gressional action;  "The  Broader  Emancipation,"  — 
a  more  definite  study  of  the  progress  of  the  negro 
since  the  Civil  War;  "Commerce  and  the  Common 
Schools,"  —  a  discussion  of  the  direct  relation  of 
public  education  to  the  general  economic  efficiency 
of  the  people ;  these,  and  a  number  of  chapters 
dealing  with  some  of  the  less  familiar  phases  of  our 
social  and  political  development,  may  possibly  find 
place  in  a  later  volume. 

The  chapters  just  named,  as  well  as  those  here 
published,  have  been  written  —  as  already  suggested 
—  from  within  the  life  and  thought  of  the  South. 
They  assume,  however,  no  representative  finality. 
They  are  not  intended  as  an  authoritative  interpre- 
tation of  Southern  opinion.  Their  essential  conclu- 
sions will  be  rejected  by  some  forces  within  the  South 
and  accepted  by  others.  Their  service  —  if  they  are 
to  prove  of  service  at  all  —  will  be  found,  however, 
not  in  the  immediate  evidences  of  agreement  or  dis- 
agreement, but  in  such  contributions  as  they  may 
offer  toward  that  slowly  forming,  collective  verdict, 
in  reference  to  Southern  issues,  in  which  the  public 
opinion  of  our  whole  country,  North  and  South,  will 
gain  at  length  its  rational  and  articulate  expression. 
Popular  judgments,  operative  as  living  social  forces 
upon  a  large  and  inclusive  scale,  act  and  react  upon 
the  national  character.  To  contribute,  however  in- 
adequately or  imperfectly,  to  their  formation  is  a 
legitimate  and  honorable  interest. 

This  volume  offers,  moreover,  no  dogmatic  "  solu- 


PREFACE  ix 

tion  "  of  the  problems  with  which  it  deals ;  least  of 
all  have  I  ventured  to  engage  in  the  famiHar  occu- 
pation of  "solving  the  negro  question."  The  great 
problems  of  Hfe  are  never  solved  in  any  mathe- 
matical or  final  sense.  They  are  solved  only  in  the 
sense  that  life  becomes  adjusted  to  them,  or  in  the 
sense  that  their  conflicting  or  complementary  ele- 
ments find  a  working  adjustment  to  one  another,  an 
adjustment  consistent,  in  larger  and  larger  measure, 
with  wisdom,  right,  happiness ;  but  always  coinci- 
dent with  the  possibility  of  misconception  and  with 
recurrent  periods  of  acute  antagonism.  The  prob- 
lems of  racial  cleavage,  like  the  problems  of  labor 
and  capital,  or  the  problems  of  science  and  religion, 
yield  to  no  precise  formulae ;  they  are  problems  of 
life,  persistent  and  irreducible.  And  yet  they  are 
subject  to  approximate  adjustments,  increasingly 
righteous,  intelligent,  and  effective,  and  yielding  an 
increasing  measure  of  social  peace,  of  industrial  co- 
operation, of  individual  freedom  and  happiness.  It 
is  in  this  sense  that  the  word  "  solution  "  is  employed 
in  the  pages  which  follow.  Toward  the  establish- 
ment of  such  a  working  adjustment  of  the  factors 
of  any  national  problem  it  is  well  to  labor,  in  order 
that  the  problems  of  American  life  may  become  the 
occasions  of  a  keener  and  more  widely  distributed 
sense  of  social  obligation,  a  larger  and  saner  political 
temper,  a  purer  civic  devotion,  rather  than  the  occa- 
sions of  national  demorahzation. 

While,  therefore,  these  chapters  are  written  from 
within  the  South,  written  by  one  who  through  birth, 
education,  training,  has  shared  its  traditions  and  its 
experience,  they  have  been  written  within  the  national 


X  PREFACE 

perspective.  More  than  once  I  have  expressed  the 
conviction  that,  in  a  certain  local  and  palpable  sense, 
the  peculiar  problems  of  the  South  are  sectional  in 
their  form.  And  yet  such  a  view  is  in  no  way 
inconsistent  with  the  contention  that  the  time  has 
now  come  when  every  problem  of  every  section  of 
our  country  is  to  be  conceived  in  the  terms  of  the 
Nation's  life. 


E.  G.  M. 


Montgomery,  Alabama, 
March  sth,  a.d.  1904. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

PAGE 

The  Old  in  the  New i 

CHAPTER  II 
The  Schools  of  the  People 29 

CHAPTER  III 
A  Constructive  Statesmanship    .        .        ,        .        .51 

CHAPTER   IV 
The  Industrial  Revival  and  Child  Labor        .        .      95 

CHAPTER  V 
Child  Labor  and  the  Industrial  South    .        .        .127 

CHAPTER  VI 
The  South  and  the  Negro 151 

CHAPTER   VII 
A  Narrative  of  Cooperation 203 

CHAPTER  VIII 
Culture  and  Democracy      .       .       ,       .       ,       .251 

Appendices 289 


n 


/ 


THE  OLD   IN  THE   NEW 


THE   PRESENT   SOUTH 

CHAPTER   I 

THE    OLD   IN   THE   NEW 

In  the  year  1865,  at  the  close  of  the  final  catas- 
trophe of  the  Southern  arms,  the  following  declaration 
was  made  in  London,  England,  by  the  late  T.  H. 
Huxley.  Mr.  Huxley,  man  of  science  and  man  of 
letters,  speaks  as  one  in  detachment  from  the  local 
and  partisan  passions  of  the  long  controversy,  but 
also  as  one  who  is,  upon  the  whole,  in  sympathy  with 
the  contention  of  the  North.  His  words  have  speciiic 
reference  to  the  issue  of  emancipation. 

"The  question,"  he  observes,  "is  settled;  but  even 
those  who  are  most  thoroughly  convinced  that  the 
doom  is  just  must  see  good  grounds  for  repudiating 
half  the  arguments  which  have  been  employed  by  the 
winning  side,  and  for  doubting  whether  its  ultimate 
results  will  embody  the  hopes  of  the  victors,  though 
they  may  more  than  realize  the  fears  of  the  van- 
quished. It  may  be  quite  true  that  some  negroes  are 
better  than  some  white  men ;  but  no  rational  man, 
cognizant  of  the  facts,  beheves  that  the  average  negro 
is  the  equal,  still  less  the  superior,  of  the  average 
white  man.  .  ,  . 

"But,"  continues  Mr.  Huxley,  "whatever  the  posi- 
tion of  stable  equilibrium  into  which  the  laws  of  social 

3 


4  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

gravitation  may  bring  the  negro,  all  responsibility  for 
the  result  will  henceforth  lie  between  Nature  and  him. 
The  white  man  may  wash  his  hands  of  it,  and  the 
Caucasian  conscience  be  void  of  reproach  for  ever- 
more. And  this,  if  we  look  to  the  bottom  of  the 
matter,  is  the  real  justification  for  the  abolition 
policy."  ^ 

It  seems  difficult  to  escape  the  conclusion  that, 
in  Mr.  Huxley's  thought,  the  policy  of  emancipation 
represented  the  rejection,  rather  than  the  expression, 
of  responsibility.  The  negro  was  to  be  freed  from 
slavery  in  order  that  the  Caucasian  might  be  freed 
from  obligation. 

One  is  amazed  to  realize  that  an  Englishman  of 
such  varied  learning  and  of  such  masterful  acumen 
should  have  had  so  imperfect  a  perception  of  the 
essential  temper  of  American  life.  The  issue  of 
emancipation  carried  no  such  significance  to  the 
North.      It  bore  no  such  significance  to  the  South. 

The  broader  heart  and  the  higher  conscience  of 
Southern  life  have  often  found  utterance  in  the  deci- 
sions of  Southern  courts,  and  in  the  declarations  of 
press  and  pulpit.  These  expressions  have  repre- 
sented, especially,  the  slaveholding  class,  the  class 
which  had  been  most  directly  involved  by  the  policy 
of  emancipation,  and  the  class,  therefore,  which  might 
have  been  expected  to  cherish  an  attitude  of  deliberate 
irresponsibility.  Yet,  in  striking  contrast  with  Pro- 
fessor Huxley's  words,  are  the  following  paragraphs 

IT.  H.  Huxley,  "  Emancipation  —  Black  and  \\Tiite  "  (1865),  in 
"  Science  and  Education,"  pp.  66,  67,  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  New  York. 
Mr.  Huxley  included  the  address,  unchanged,  in  the  latest  edition  of 
his  works. 


I  THE  OLD   IN  THE   NEW  5 

from  one  of  the  most  intensely  Southern  of  Southern 
publicists,  one  high  in  the  counsels  of  the  Confeder- 
acy, an  ex-slaveholder,  a  veteran  both  of  the  Mexican 
War  and  of  the  War  between  the  States,  —  all  in  all, 
perhaps,  in  these  recent  years,  the  most  typical  repre- 
sentative of  the  old  South.  It  was  at  Montgomery, 
Alabama, — the  first  capital  of  the  Confederacy, — that 
the  late  J.  L.  M.  Curry  addressed  these  words  to  a 
Southern  audience  on  the  evening  of  May  9,  1900. 

"We  have  heard  much  already,"  said  he,  "and 
will  hear  more  before  we  adjourn,  of  slavery.  It  was 
an  economic  curse,  a  legacy  of  ignorance. 

"  It  cursed  the  South  with  stupid,  ignorant,  unin- 
ventive  labor.  The  curse  in  large  degree  remains. 
The  policy  of  some  would  perpetuate  it  and  give  a 
system  of  serfdom,  degrading  to  the  negro,  corrupt- 
.  ing  to  the  employer.  The  negro  is  a  valuable  laborer ; 
let  us  improve  him  and  make  his  labor  more  intelli- 
gent, more  skilled,  more  productive.  .  .  .  Shall  the 
Caucasian  race,  in  timid  fearfulness,  in  cowardly 
injustice,  wrong  an  inferior  race,  put  obstacles  to  its 
progress .?  Left  to  itself,  away  from  the  elevating 
influence  of  contact  and  tuition,  there  will  be  retro- 
gression. Shall  we  hasten  the  retrogression,  shall 
we  have  two  races  side  by  side,  equal  in  political 
privileges,  one  educated,  the  other  ignorant .-'  Unless 
the  white  people,  the  superior,  the  cultivated  race,  lift 
up  the  lower,  both  will  be  inevitably  dragged  down. 

"  Look  at  these  roses  on  this  platform.  They 
have  been  developed  from  an  inferior  plant  by  skilled 
culture  into  gorgeous  American  Beauties.  So  it  is 
with  other  flowers  and  fruits ;  so  with  animals,  and 
so  it  is  with   men.      Eight  hundred  years  ago  our 


6  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

ancestors  were  pirates,  careless  of  laws,  either  of 
God  or  man,  and  yet  by  culture  and  education,  and 
discipline  and  free  institutions  and  liberty  of  worship, 
they  have  been  made  the  people  that  they  are  to-day. 
God's  throne  is  justice  and  right  and  truth.  Unseat 
Him  from  that  throne  and  he  becomes  a  demon ;  and 
so  will  sink  our  Southern  civilization  into  "infamy  if 
we  are  guilty  of  cruelest  injustice  to  an  inferior  race, 
whom  God  has  put  into  our  hands  as  trustees  for 
their  elevation  and  improvement,  and  for  His  glory."  ^ 
As  I  heard  Dr.  Curry's  words,  I  do  not  know 
which  was  the  more  inspiring,  the  moral  virility  with 
which  he  spoke,  or  the  earnest  and  impassioned  ap- 
proval with  which  his  audience  responded  to  his  mes- 
sage. For  the  words  were  as  typical  as  the  man. 
They  were  not  an  exceptional  declaration.  Such 
words  from  Curry,  and  from  others  like  him,  had  long 
been  familiar  to  Southern  ears.  There  was  not  a 
Southern  legislature  to  which  Curry  himself  —  by 
special  invitation  —  had  not  brought  a  like  appeal 
again  and  yet  again.  There  was  always  something 
leonine  in  the  regal  and  commanding  power  with 
which  his  eye  flashed  his  instinctive  scorn  of  wrong, 
and  with  which  his  voice  thundered  the  realities  of 
that  moral  obligation  which  binds  the  strong  man  to 
the  weak.  There  was  something  deeply  veracious, 
something  restorative  of  one's  essential  confidence  in 
life,  to  note  that  the  highest  appeal  to  the  people 
whom  he  addressed  was  always  followed  by  the  most 
spontaneous  and   most  serious   tribute   of   applause. 

1  See  Report  of  the  Conference  of  the  Society  for  the  Consideration 
of  the  Race  Problems  and  Conditions  of  the  South,  pubUshed  by  the 
B.  F.  Johnson  PubUshing  Company,  Richmond,  Virginia,  pp.  112,  113. 


I  THE   OLD   IN   THE   NEW  7 

The  measure  of  the  Southern  conscience  cannot  be 
taken  from  the  expressions  that  have  sometimes 
greeted  an  unintelligent  censure  from  without.  It  is 
only  when  a  people,  united  by  a  common  suffering 
and  bearing  a  common  burden,  are  overheard  in  their 
converse  with  one  another,  it  is  only  when  the  South 
speaks  freely  to  the  South,  that  one  may  catch  that 
real  spirit  of  noblesse  oblige  which  has  so  largely 
dominated  the  development  of  Southern  life.  It  is 
one  of  the  incredibilities  of  history  that  in  the  world's 
discussions  of  the  South  the  occasional  victories  of 
impatience  should  loom  so  large,  and  that  the  South's 
far  greater  victories  of  magnanimity  should  loom  so 
small.  There  is,  indeed,  nothing  more  characteristic 
of  the  Southern  temper  —  whatever  the  suggestion 
of  Mr.  Huxley's  inference  —  than  that  deep  note  of 
responsibility  which  sounds  through  Dr.  Curry's 
words.  The  sense  of  responsibility  may  express 
itself  wisely  or  mistakenly,  perversely  or  construc- 
tively, but  whatever  the  form  of  its  expression,  the 
consciousness  of  obligation  is  not  absent. 

It  is,  therefore,  by  no  accident  of  language  that  this 
sense  of  responsibility,  as  expressed  in  the  words  just 
quoted,  should  define,  under  certain  characteristic 
assumptions,  the  policy  of  the  South  in  reference  to 
the  negro.  There  is  a  distinct  assumption  of  the 
negro's  inferiority ;  but  there  is  also  a  distinct  as- 
sumption of  the  negro's  improvability.  It  is  upon 
the  basis  of  this  double  assumption  that  the  South 
finds  its  obligation.  If  the  negro  were  not  peculiarly 
in  need  of  progress,  or  if  the  negro  were  utterly  in- 
capable of  progress,  the  problem  of  his  progress 
could  bring  no  especial  burden  to  the  South.     Recog- 


8  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

nizing  the  double  fact,  first  the  fact  of  the  negro's 
need  and  then  the  fact  of  the  negro's  promise,  the 
South,  as  suggested  in  our  quotation,  has  conceived 
her  responsibihty  both  as  a  policy  of  supreme  self- 
interest  and  as  an  obligation  of  Christian  stewardship. 

This  sense  of  responsibihty  is  the  present  residuum 
of  the  moral  forces  of  the  old  South.  It  is  a  natural 
and  legitimate  development.  It  was  under  slavery 
that  men  learned  the  oppressive  significance  of  the 
negro's  heritage  from  barbarism.  It  was  under  slav- 
ery that  men  first  learned  the  presence  of  those  latent 
capacities  by  which  the  negro  has  so  often  tran- 
scended the  limitations  of  that  heritage.  It  was 
through  the  bond  of  slavery  that  the  wiser  South  was 
taught,  in  the  light  of  an  immediate  self-interest,  the 
advantage  to  the  white  man  in  the  negro's  integrity 
and  skill,  —  the  disadvantage,  indeed  the  peril,  to 
the  white  man  in  the  negro's  inefficiency  and  vice. 
Finally,  it  was  through  this  bond  of  slavery  that  the 
truer  South  was  taught,  in  the  countless  daily  appeals 
of  the  negro's  absolute  dependence,  —  the  appeal  of 
ignorance  to  knowledge,  of  weakness  to  strength,  of 
suffering  to  a  sympathetic  and  interested  power  — 
the  spirit  of  that  tender  and  generous  paternalism 
which  so  often  made  the  master  a  sort  of  feudal 
providence  to  those  in  servitude. 

If  the  rigors  of  slavery  made  it  a  system  of  bond- 
age to  the  negro,  its  responsibilities  made  it  also  a 
system  of  bondage  to  the  master.  There  were  many 
men  to  whom  these  responsibilities  brought  moral  dis- 
aster, men  who  abused  authorities  which  were  so  much 
greater  than  flesh  and  blood  should  wield.  There 
were  other  men,  however,  whose  genius,  half  domestic 


I  THE   OLD   IN  THE  NEW  9 

and  half  executive,  set  the  ideal  of  the  institution, 
and  as  controversy  gathered  about  the  institution 
they  became  the  more  sensitively  jealous  of  this  ideal 
—  holding  it  up  to  themselves  and  to  one  another, 
and  attempting,  ever  the  more  seriously  as  the  quarrel 
raged,  to  discharge  its  responsibilities,  and  to  justify, 
by  a  broader  solicitude  and  a  more  considerate  kindli- 
ness, the  awful  prerogatives  of  the  master.  Yet  the 
issue  of  this  struggle  was,  to  many,  but  a  heavy 
and  saddened  heart.  The  burden  was  too  great,  and 
emancipation  brought  a  quick  sense  of  inexpressible 
relief.  Emancipation  did  not,  however,  remove  the 
negro.  The  negro  remained  and  the  white  man 
remained.  Their  proximity  to  each  other  was  as  palpa- 
ble, as  inevitable,  as  ever.  The  burden  was  lightened, 
was  altered  in  its  form,  but  the  fact  of  responsibility 
continued,  and  the  ideal  of  responsibility  could  not 
perish.  The  appeal  of  the  weak  still  came  up  to 
the  hearts  of  the  strong.  The  crude  necessities  of  the 
ignorant  and  the  helpless  still  asked  an  answer.  The 
habitual  directions  of  moral  interest  are  not  easily 
overcome,  and  the  strong  custom  of  a  protective  and 
directive  oversight  still  bound  the  white  man  to  the 
fortunes  of  his  humbler  fellows. 

At  this  point  in  the  new  development  of  the  rela- 
tionship between  the  races,  and  across  the  many  lines 
of  its  promise,  —  its  promise  to  the  negro  and  to  the 
peace  of  the  South,  —  there  crashed  the  congres- 
sional policies  of  reconstruction.  I  enter  here  upon 
no  criticism  of  these  policies  in  detail.  I  pause  only 
to  point  out  their  direct  effect  upon  that  sense  of 
responsibility  to  which  slavery  had  contributed.  The 
policies  of   reconstruction  represented  two   cardinal 


10  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

movements  of  purpose.  One  was  the  withdrawal  of 
political  and  civic  power  from  those,  especially  those 
in  official  position,  who  had  borne  arms  against  the 
United  States.  This  effort  was  an  expedient  of  dis- 
trust. It  was  as  natural  as  it  was  unintelligent,  and 
it  was  as  successful  as  it  was  mischievous.  Those 
who  had  borne  arms,  especially  those  in  positions 
of  responsibility,  were  largely  the  slaveholding  class, 
the  representatives  of  the  aristocracy,  the  men  who 
were  the  heirs  of  the  broader  and  nobler  traditions 
of  the  South.  They  were  most  generously  disposed 
toward  the  freedmen.  They  were  most  scrupulously 
faithful  to  the  terms  of  their  surrender.  They,  like 
men,  had  fought  it  out;  and  they,  like  men,  had 
accepted  the  verdict  in  containment,  if  not  in  full 
content.  The  measures  of  reconstruction  took  power 
from  them,  leaving  power  in  the  hands  of  the  young 
and  the  irresponsible.  When  these  men  came  to 
their  throne  and  faced  the  presence  of  the  negro,  it 
was  as  though  a  Pharaoh  had  arisen  who  knew  not 
Joseph.  It  was  from  their  ranks  that  the  more  vio- 
lent measures  of  the  Ku-Klux  Klan  too  often  gained 
support.  Nor  had  they  faced  the  bitter  realities  of 
war.  They  knew  not  therefore,  they  could  not  know, 
the  cost  and  the  worth  of  peace. 

The  old  South  was  the  real  nucleus  of  the  new 
nationalism.  The  old  South,  or  in  a  more  general 
sense  the  South  of  responsibiUty,  the  men  of  family, 
the  planter  class,  the  official  soldiery,  or  (if  you 
please)  the  aristocracy, — the  South  that  had  had 
power,  and  to  whom  power  had  taught  those  truths 
of  life,  those  dignities  and  fidelities  of  temper,  which 
power  always   teaches  men,  —  this  older  South  was 


I  THE  OLD   IN  THE  NEW  II 

the  true  basis  of  an  enduring  peace  between  the 
sections  and  between  the  races.  But  a  doubt  was 
put  upon  its  word  given  at  Appomattox.  Its  repre- 
sentatives were  subjected  to  disfranchisement.  Power 
was  struck  from  its  hands.  Its  sense  of  responsi- 
biUty  was  wounded  and  confused. 

This  was  not  all.  The  suffrage  which  the  masters 
were  denied  was  by  the  same  act  committed  into  the 
hands  of  their  former  slaves,  vast  dumb  multitudes, 
more  helpless  with  power  than  without  power.  Men 
from  afar,  under  whose  auspices  this  new  preroga- 
tive was  bestowed,  were  present  to  instruct  them, 
not  in  fitness  for  it,  but  in  its  apt  and  grateful  use. 
The  negro  masses,  upon  the  suffrage  as  a  basis,  were 
reorganized  out  of  their  old  economic  and  human 
dependence  upon  their  masters  of  the  past,  into  a 
formal  political  dependence  upon  the  vague  and 
beneficent  authority  which  had  freed  them.  I  write 
primarily,  not  in  order  to  accuse,  but  in  order  that 
we  may  understand. 

The  effect  of  the  new  alliance  of  the  freedmen,  the 
effect  upon  their  own  relation  to  the  poHtical  reor- 
ganization of  Southern  society,  must  be  evident. 
The  strong  and  effective  forces  which  had  secured 
this  new  alignment  were  soon  withdrawn.  The 
actual  reorganization  of  the  South  was  left,  as  was 
inevitable,  to  the  resident  forces  of  Southern  life. 
The  new  allies  of  the  freedmen  could  not  share  in 
so  short  a  time  that  identity  of  interest  in  the  soil, 
in  the  intimate  fortunes  of  the  South,  which  the 
negro  had  once  felt.  The  agents  of  reconstruction 
who  remained  were  just  strong  enough  to  modify 
this  feeling  in  the  negro,  to  make  the  negro  distrust 


12  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

the  South  and  to  make  the  South  distrust  the  negro. 
They  were  not  strong  enough  seriously  to  contribute, 
or  to  aid  the  negro  in  contributing,  to  the  rebuilding 
of  the  poUtical  commonwealth.  With  the  checking 
and  the  confusion  of  their  sense  of  responsibihty 
toward  the  blacks,  it  is  therefore  not  unnatural  that 
the  negro's  older  allies  should  have  omitted  him  from 
even  a  humble  partnership  in  the  task  of  rehabilita- 
tion. To  the  consciousness  of  the  South,  engaged 
in  a  desperate  struggle  for  unification  and  for  reinte- 
gration, the  ballot  of  the  black  man  thus  unfortu- 
nately represented  not  only  a  negro  suffrage,  not  only 
an  incompetent  suffrage,  but  an  alien  suffrage. 

The  political  reorganization  which  was  proceeding 
was  all  the  more  difficult  because  the  South  was  just 
entering,  by  pain  and  sacrifice,  into  the  crucial  move- 
ment of  the  century.  The  historian  of  institutions 
must  perceive  that  the  real  struggle  of  the  South  from 
the  date  of  Lee's  surrender  —  through  all  the  accidents 
of  political  and  industrial  revolution  —  was  simply 
a  struggle  toward  the  creation  of  democratic  con- 
ditions. The  real  thing,  in  the  unfolding  of  the  later 
South,  is  the  arrival  of  the  common  man.  Southern 
development  is,  in  its  essence,  but  an  approach  to 
democracy,  to  democracy  not  merely  as  a  theory  of 
administration,  but  as  an  expression  of  society  itself. 

The  thinking  and  responsible  life  of  the  South,  as 
we  have  seen,  had  been  an  aristocracy.  We  may 
note  the  fact  without  criticism,  for  it  was  inevitable. 
We  may  note  its  passing  without  regret,  because  its 
passing  was  the  deeper  emancipation  —  an  emancipa- 
tion which  is  bringing  to  the  South  a  richer  and 
larger  life  than  the  older  age,  with  all  its  charm  and 


I  THE  OLD   IN  THE   NEW  13 

fulness,  could  have  dreamed.  Yet  men  have  often 
failed  to  realize  the  drastic  conditions  of  reorganiza- 
tion into  which  Southern  experience  was  compelled, 
both  by  the  issue  of  the  Civil  War  and  by  the  federal 
policies  which  followed.  It  was  nothing  less  than 
the  reconstitution  of  an  aristocratic  society  under 
democratic  conditions.  The  change  was  inevitable, 
but  the  effort  to  force  the  change,  to  create  it  "over- 
night," to  take  an  aristocratic  civilization  and  to  ham- 
mer it  into  another  shape  between  sundown  and  sunup, 
to  create  republican  institutions  by  military  power,  to 
inaugurate  freedom  by  force  and  a  democracy  by 
martial  law,  was  —  in  the  nature  of  the  case  —  impos- 
sible. And  for  two  reasons.  Democracy  is  a  thing 
of  growth  and  not  of  fiat ;  and  democracy,  of  all  the 
forms  of  governmental  or  constitutional  life,  is  the 
very  form  which  cannot  be  nailed  on  from  outside. 
It  is  by  its  very  essence  a  form  of  government  pro- 
ceeding from  within.  It  is  an  instinct  of  life  before 
it  is  an  organization  of  society.  Because  democracy 
is  an  institution  of  freedom,  the  very  effort  to  force 
democracy  is  its  denial  and  subversion.  There  has, 
therefore,  never  been  a  cruder  oligarchy  than  that 
represented  by  the  reconstruction  governments  of  the 
Southern  States. 

Yet,  under  all  the  conditions  of  the  new  order,  the 
movement  toward  democracy  —  however  thwarted  or 
embarrassed  —  made  gradual  progress.  Civilization 
must  be  reattempted,  society  must  become  a  coherent 
and  stable  force;  life,  liberty,  and  property  cried  out  for 
government.  The  only  existent  forms  of  government 
were  democratic.  Democracy  was  the  assumption  of 
civilization ;  and  therefore  the  thought  and  purpose 


14  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

of  the  South  attempted  their  own  reorganization  under 
the  new  conditions.  The  aristocracy,  however,  could 
no  longer  stand  alone.  It  could  not  express  itself,  it 
could  give  neither  currency  nor  efficiency  to  its  con- 
ceptions, it  could  not  create  government  nor  adminis- 
ter laws,  except  by  some  deeper  alliance  with  human 
numbers.  The  aristocracy  could  furnish  leadership, 
but  the  people  must  furnish  votes. 

There  were  but  two  quarters  from  which  the  vol- 
ume of  cooperation  could  be  increased.  The  older 
civilization  had  contained  two  great  classes  of  "  non- 
participants."  First  were  the  slaves.  We  have  seen 
the  working  of  the  forces  and  the  rise  of  the  condi- 
tions which  made  it  unnatural  and  impossible  for  the 
aristocracy  —  still,  as  yet,  the  leaders  of  the  new 
order  —  to  turn  for  cooperation  to  the  blacks.  The 
removal  of  their  own  civil  disabilities  had  not  made 
the  leaders  of  the  aristocracy  forget.  Nor  had  the 
negroes  themselves  forgotten  either  their  natural 
gratitude  to  their  new  masters  or  their  unnatural 
suspicion  of  the  old.  In  the  movement  toward 
democracy,  in  spite  of  whatever  theoretic  inconsist- 
ency, the  conditions  thus  made  it  impossible  to 
include  the  blacks. 

In  the  older  civilization,  the  other  class  of  non- 
participants  were  the  non-slaveholding  white  men. 
I  use  the  term  non-participants  in  what  is,  of  course, 
a  broad  and  general  sense,  a  sense  in  which  I  have 
employed  many  of  the  expressions  of  this  chapter. 
Non-participants  they  were,  but  some  of  them  were 
men  of  wealth  and  influence.  As  a  class,  however, 
the  non-slaveholding  white  men  had  been  outside 
the  essential  councils  of  the  South.     Many  of  them 


I  THE  OLD   IN  THE  NEW  15 

voted  ;  some  of  them,  through  sheer  personal  distinc- 
tion, had  entered  the  ranks  of  the  privileged,  but  as 
a  whole  they  stood  aloof ;  they  were  supposed  to  fol- 
low where  others  led  ;  they  might  furnish  the  ballots, 
but  the  "  superior  "  class  was  supposed  to  provide  the 
candidates  for  important  office.  There  was  no  inti- 
mate or  cordial  alliance  between  their  forces  and  the 
forces  of  the  aristocracy.  Multitudes  of  them  were 
left  wholly  illiterate.  White  illiteracy  at  the  South 
long  antedates  the  Civil  War.  In  i860,  less  than 
I  per  cent  of  the  adult  native  white  population  of 
Massachusetts  were  illiterate ;  in  Pennsylvania,  less 
than  3  per  cent ;  in  Connecticut,  less  than  i  per  cent ; 
in  New  York,  less  than  2  per  cent :  but  of  the  adult 
native  white  population  of  Virginia,  in  i860,  more 
than  14  per  cent  could  not  read  and  write ;  in  Ten- 
nessee, more  than  16  per  cent;  in  North  Carolina, 
more  than  21  per  cent.^  To  the  white  non-partici- 
pants of  the  older  civilization  the  aristocracy  turned 
instinctively,  however,   in   its    reorganization    of   the 

1  This  striking  contrast  between  the  civilizations  of  the  North  and 
the  South  is  largely  due  to  the  historic  difference  in  the  attitude  of  the 
respective  sections  toward  the  education  of  the  masses.  Says  James 
Bryce,  "  In  old  colonial  ^days,  when  the  English  Commissioners  for 
Foreign  Plantations  asked  for  information  on  the  subject  of  educa- 
tion from  the  governors  of  Virginia  and  Connecticut,  the  former  re- 
plied, '  I  thank  God  there  are  no  free  schools  or  printing-presses,  and 
I  hope  we  shall  not  have  any  these  hundred  years  ;  '  and  the  latter, 
'  One-fourth  of  the  annual  revenue  of  the  colony  is  laid  out  in  main- 
taining free  schools  for  the  education  of  our  children.'" — "The 
American  Commonwealth,"  Third  Ed,,  Vol.  I,  Chap.  XLIX,  p.  618. 
Thomas  Jefferson,  in  his  effort  to  secure  the  foundation  of  public 
schools  in  Virginia,  points,  in  vigorous  fashion,  to  the  contrast  between 
the  policy  of  Virginia  and  the  liberal  policy  of  New  York.  See  Letter 
to  John  Cabell,  Washington  Edition  of  Jefferson,  Vol.  VII,  pp.  186, 
188;  Ford  Ed.,  Vol.  X,  pp.  165,  167. 


i6  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

South.  The  alienation  of  the  negro  and  the  menace 
of  negro  power  not  only  eliminated  the  negro  from 
the  attempted  reorganization  of  government,  but 
operated  also  as  a  constraining  force  to  draw  to- 
gether the  separate  classes  of  the  stronger  race,  and 
to  fuse  them  —  men  of  ignorance  with  men  of  culture 
—  into  a  racial  unity  far  more  powerful,  far  more 
effective,  than  the  South  had  known  before. 

Politically,  industrially,  and  I  had  almost  said 
socially,  this  fusion  is  now  practically  complete. 
Still  there  are,  in  the  white  population,  large  numbers 
of  the  illiterate ;  but  in  the  distribution  of  political 
and  industrial  responsibilities  the  South  knows  no 
longer  the  old  distinctions  of  clan  and  class.  The 
line  of  illiteracy  is  now  local  rather  than  social.  It  is 
a  phenomenon  conspicuous  in  rural  localities,  con- 
spicuous nowhere  in  the  cities.  The  democratizing 
of  the  South  has  assimilated  within  its  progress  all 
the  classes  and  factions  of  its  white  people.  The 
aristocracy  exists  no  longer  as  a  distinct  political  or 
industrial  force.  The  expanding  and  enlarging  life 
of  democracy  has  included  in  the  conscious  move- 
ment of  our  civilization  the  most  important  of  the 
non-participants  of  the  older  order.  It  is  one  of  the 
far-reaching  achievements  of  a  democratic  age. 

I  have  said  that  the  old  South  was  the  true  basis 
of  the  new  nationalism.  It  has  also  been  the  real 
basis  of  the  new  democracy.  It  is  true  that  it  has 
maintained  at  the  South  the  old  consciousness  of 
importance  —  a  consciousness  which  still  impresses 
itself  upon  the  life  of  the  Nation,  and  which  has  been 
wholly  unmoved  by  the  fact  that  the  South  contains 
to-day  but  one-fourth  of  the  white  population  of  the 


I  THE   OLD   IN  THE   NEW  17 

land.  It  has  maintained  the  old  self-confidence,  both 
in  counsel  and  in  action.  It  has  maintained,  in  large 
degree,  the  old  reverences  and  the  old  assumptions 
of  social  usage.  But,  chiefly,  it  has  maintained,  as 
one  of  the  deepest  forces  of  its  social  heredity,  the 
old  sense  of  responsibility  toward  the  unprivileged. 
It  is  this  force  which  has  given  distinction  and  beauty 
to  the  alliance  between  the  aristocracy  and  the  com- 
mon people. 

It  is  in  its  surrender  to  this  force  that  the  old  aris- 
tocracy has  passed  away.  It  is  in  response  to  this 
force  that  the  plain  people  have  arrived,  have  arrived 
through  the  manifestation  of  those  latent  powers  of 
initiative,  those  native  capacities  of  energy  and  pur- 
pose, which  have  proved  the  amazement  of  the  his- 
torian. Where  the  aristocracy  has  been  sometimes 
faithless  to  its  broader  mission,  the  plain  people  have 
often  wrested  the  rights  which  have  been  denied.  In 
more  than  one  locality  the  common  people  have 
ruthlessly  assumed  the  reins  of  power ;  it  is  a  phe- 
nomenon attended  by  its  perils  as  well  as  by  its  in- 
spirations. But  upon  the  whole  it  is  chiefly  by 
co5peration  that  the  white  solidarity  of  the  South 
has  been  secured,  a  soHdarity  which  has  been  the 
broader  ground  of  the  new  democracy,  and  which 
has  sought  a  larger  social  unity  upon  the  basis  of 
unity  of  race.  As  a  basis  for  democracy,  the  con- 
scious unity  of  race  is  not  wholly  adequate,  but  it  is 
better  as  a  basis  of  democratic  reorganization  than 
the  distinctions  of  wealth,  of  trade,  of  property,  of 
family,  or  class.  The  passion  for  rehabilitation  has 
swept  the  circle  of  social  life,  and  has  included  every 
child  within  its  policies.  Through  large  sections  of 
c 


i8  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

the  South  it  has  made  the  enthusiasm  for  popular 
education  a  form  of  civic  piety.  The  cause  of  the 
common  schools  has  become,  not  only  a  tenet  of 
patriotism,  but  a  social  faith.  It  has  entered  the 
programme  of  politics.  Popular  education  is  to-day 
the  theme  of  debate  before  multitudes  gathered  in 
humble  "meeting-houses,"  or  on  the  quiet  hillsides 
under  the  open  sky,  or  in  the  forest  pulpits  of  the  rural 
church.  The  debate  proceeds,  often  attended  by 
larger  audiences  and  a  deeper  interest  than  any  that 
attend  the  partisan  discussions  of  the  political  cam- 
paign, a  debate  characterized  by  no  clatter  of  the 
demagogue,  but  by  that  note  of  seriousness  found  in 
a  man's  voice  only  when  he  talks  of  the  intimate 
realities  of  his  domestic  or  religious  experience.  This 
is  no  vision  of  far-distant  possibilities.  It  is  a  story 
of  the  present.  Does  it  mean  merely  that  democracy 
is  being  attempted .''  It  means  rather  that  democracy 
—  so  far  —  has  been  achieved.  Democracy  in  its 
essence  has  arrived  when  the  rich  man  and  the  poor 
man,  the  man  of  the  professions  and  the  man  of 
trade,  the  privileged  and  the  unprivileged,  unite  to 
build  the  common  school  for  the  children  of  the 
State.  It  means  that  the  non-participants  have 
come  to  take  their  part,  in  a  certain  high  and  liberal 
sense,  not  only  as  the  factors  of  government,  but  as 
the  heirs  of  a  larger  world. 

And  what  of  that  other  class  of  the  "  non-partici- 
pants "  in  the  older  civilization  ?  What  of  the  negro  } 
It  was  inevitable  that  thus  far  he  should  have  been 
largely  omitted.  It  was  inevitable  that  the  movement 
of  democracy  should  have  first  included  the  non-par- 
ticipants of  the  homogeneous  population.     But  is  the 


I  THE   OLD   IN  THE  NEW  19 

negro  to  be  omitted  in  perpetuity  ?  Is  the  organiza- 
tion of  democracy  in  our  Southern  States  never  to 
include  him?  Is  he  never  —  as  a  factor  of  govern- 
ment and  as  the  heir  of  a  free  and  generous  Kfe  —  to 
be  accepted  as  a  participant  in  our  civilization  ? 

Such  questions  necessitate  the  definition  of  certain 
terms.  Democracy  does  not  mean  the  erasure  of 
individuality  in  the  man,  the  family,  or  the  race.  Its 
unity  is  truer  and  richer  because  not  run  in  one  color 
or  expressed  in  monotony  of  form.  Like  all  vital 
unities,  it  is  composite.  It  is  consistent  with  the  indi- 
viduality of  the  man,  it  is  consistent  with  the  full  indi- 
viduality and  the  separate  integrity  of  the  races.  No 
one  has  ever  asserted  that  the  racial  individuality  of 
the  Jew,  preserved  for  sixty  centuries  and  through 
more  than  sixty  civilizations,  by  conviction  from  within 
and  by  pressure  from  without,  was  a  contradiction  of 
democratic  life.  Democracy  does  not  involve  the 
fusion  of  races  any  more  than  it  involves  the  fusion 
of  creeds  or  the  fusion  of  arts.  It  does  not  imply 
that  the  finality  of  civilization  is  in  the  man  who  is 
white  or  in  the  man  who  is  black,  but  in  the  man  — 
white  or  black  —  who  is  a  man.  Manhood,  in  a 
democracy,  is  the  essential  basis  of  participation. 

We  hear  upon  every  hand  that  the  South  has 
refused  its  recognition  to  this  principle.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  and  under  their  amended  constitutions,  tens 
of  thousands  of  black  men  are  to-day  registered  voters 
in  the  Southern  States,  voters  registered  not  against 
the  consent  of  the  South,  but  by  the  South's  free  and 
deliberate  will.^  In  view  of  the  brief  period  of  time 
since  the  negro's  emancipation  and  in  the  light  of  the 

^  See  also  footnote  to  p.  198  of  this  volume. 


20  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

negro's  political  history,  this  voluntary  registration  of 
black  men  in  the  South,  this  partial  but  increasing  ac- 
ceptance by  the  South  of  the  quahfied  negro  as  a  par- 
ticipant in  the  functions  of  government,  is  of  far  greater 
significance  in  the  essential  history  of  democracy  than 
any  temporary  record  of  exclusion  or  injustice.  The 
negro  common  school — nearly  one  million  six  hundred 
thousand  negro  children  are  enrolled  in  public  schools 
supported  by  the  Southern  States  ^  —  this  negro  com- 
mon school,  with  its  industrial  and  political  signifi- 
cance, is  of  greater  import  in  the  history  of  our 
institutions  than  any  temporary  or  partial  denial  of 
political  privilege.  With  the  suffrage  question,  in 
detail,  I  shall  deal  hereafter.  I  pause  here  only  to 
protest  against  that  crudity  of  impatience  with  which 
the  world  has  so  largely  observed  the  development  of 
Southern  life.  Expecting  within  the  brief  period  of 
a  generation  the  entire  re-creation  of  our  industrial 
fortunes  and  of  our  political  institutions,  men  have 
waited  to  see  the  whole  character  of  a  civilization 
doffed  like  an  outer  garment ;  the  fabric  of  a  new 
order  —  involving  the  deepest  issues  of  memory,  of 
passion,  of  pride,  of  racial  and  social  habit  —  instantly 
re-created  upon  a  strange  loom  and  woven  forthwith 
after  a  pattern  commended  by  that  strenuous  dilet- 
tantism which  deals  daily,  with  impartial  ease,  moral- 
ity to  presidents,  reminders  to  empires,  and  a  reserved 
approval  to  the  solar  system.  Are  not  the  real  achieve- 
ments of  democracy  at  the  South  of  far  more  signifi- 
cance than  its  failures .'' 

Yet  the  gains  of  the  past  are  not  to  be  the  occa- 

^  See  Report  of  the  U.S.  Commissioner  of  Education  for  1902,  Vol. 
n,  p.  2063. 


I  THE   OLD   IN  THE  NEW  21 

sions  of  surrender,  but  the  ground  of  constructive 
effort.  They  are  ours,  not  to  excuse,  but  to  inspire  us. 
Out  of  those  gains  and  out  of  the  history  which  they 
have  brought  us,  I  think  the  cardinal  considerations 
have  come  forth.  The  first  is  that,  whatever  Mr. 
Huxley  may  have  read  into  the  policy  of  emancipa- 
tion, that  policy  meant  to  North  and  South,  to  the 
Nation  as  a  whole,  only  a  deeper  acceptance  of  obliga- 
tion. The  second  consideration  is  that  this  sense  of 
responsibility,  deepened  rather  than  destroyed  by  the 
burden  of  slavery,  was  the  noble  and  fruitful  gift  of 
the  old  South  to  the  new,  a  gift  brought  out  of  the 
conditions  of  an  aristocracy,  but  responsive  and  opera- 
tive under  every  challenge  in  the  changing  conditions 
of  the  later  order.  It  was  personified  in  Lee.  It 
spoke  in  Curry,  in  Wade  Hampton,  in  L.  Q.  C.  Lamar, 
in  William  L.  Wilson.  It  has  continued  to  speak 
through  men  like  John  B.  Gordon  and  Henry  Grady 
in  Georgia,  Hke  Thomas  G.  Jones  and  Hilary  A. 
Herbert  of  Alabama,  like  Fenner  and  Blanchard  of 
Louisiana,  like  Montague  in  Virginia,  hke  Aycock  and 
Heyward  in  the  Carolinas.  It  lies  also  at  the  heart 
of  the  future  South,  the  South  of  younger  men  and 
more  varied  forces,  and  it  is  to  this  sense  of  responsi- 
bility, to  this  local  and  resident  consciousness  of  power 
and  right  that — for  every  real  and  permanent  enlarge- 
ment of  democracy  —  the  appeal  must  be  addressed. 

That  the  South  will  do  justice  to  the  negro  and  to 
the  more  helpless  elements  of  her  industrial  life,  I 
have  no  manner  of  doubt.  Certain  current  proposals 
of  political  policy  at  the  South,  certain  passing  phases 
of  industrial  oppression,  receive  direct  and  frequent 
criticism  in  the  pages  which  are  to  follow.     But  this 


22  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

criticism  is  the  criticism  of  a  vigorous  confidence, 
not  the  criticism  of  distrust.  It  is  a  criticism  which 
assumes,  before  all  things,  the  presence  in  Southern 
life  of  that  quick  sense  of  social  obligation  —  always 
the  deepest  virtue  of  the  nobler  aristocracy  —  which 
has  come  over  to  us  from  the  past.  It  is  a  criticism 
which  represents  the  conviction  that  now,  as  ever, 
the  appeal  to  the  local  conscience,  to  the  resident 
forces  of  Southern  character,  —  this  and  only  this 
is  the  real  hope  of  the  future  of  democracy  in  our 
Southern  States. 

But  —  the  reader  asks  —  shall  the  Nation  have 
nothing  to  say .''  Is  not  the  South  too  sensitive  to 
criticism  from  without }  True,  this  sensitiveness  is 
here.  Is  it  a  thing  to  be  regretted  ?  Is  it  not  better 
than  indifference  .-*  Is  it  not  a  more  wholesome  social 
asset  than  the  leaden  torpor  of  certain  other  localities 
of  the  Nation  ?  Is  it  not  a  force  of  constructive  good 
as  compared  with  the  temper  of  that  self-satisfaction 
which  is  so  conscious  of  its  own  attainment  that  it  is 
wholly  and  placidly  unconscious  of  the  world's  vaster 
hope,  the  century's  ideal,  the  broader  expectations  of 
society.''  Is  not  this  sensitiveness  of- the  South  a 
patent  evidence  of  that  very  sense  of  responsibility  to 
which  reference  has  been  made .-'  Those  only  are 
sensitive  to  criticism  who  are  conscious  of  failures 
because  they  are  peculiarly  conscious  of  great,  com- 
manding, haunting  responsibilities. 

But  is  not  this  larger  and  more  sympathetic 
recognition  of  the  sense  of  local  obligation  but 
another  phase  of  the  old  cry  to  "  Let  the  South 
alone  "  ?  In  one  sense,  No ;  for  in  one  sense  that 
cry  has  been  clearly  wrong.     There  is  such  a  thing 


I  THE  OLD  IN  THE  NEW  23 

as  a  national  citizenship,  and  the  rights  of  all  its 
elements,  however  humble,  must  be  the  subjects  of 
national  discussion.  But  what  is  a  national  discus- 
sion ?  Is  it  a  criticism  assuming  that  the  Nation  in 
its  righteousness  is  on  one  side  and  that  the  South  is 
sitting  in  darkness  on  the  other  ?  If  the  Nation  must 
include  the  South  in  the  partnership  of  responsibility, 
the  Nation  recognizes  and  includes  the  South  in  the 
partnership  of  rectification.  There  is  no  federal 
law  which  is  not  dependent  for  its  efficiency  upon 
the  action  of  Southern  juries  and  upon  the  effective 
sentiment  of  Southern  communities.  If  this  is  one 
country  in  the  sense  that  there  is  no  conceivable  way 
for  men  in  the  South  to  commit  wrongs  outside  of  the 
Nation,  it  is  also  one  country  in  the  sense  that  there 
is  no  conceivable  way  for  the  Nation  permanently  to 
correct  these  wrongs  except  through  the  moral  forces 
of  the  South. 

It  is  forgetfulness  of  this  fact,  it  is  the  petulant 
depreciation  of  the  South  as  a  whole,  which  has  called 
forth  the  cry,  "  Let  us  alone."  And,  as  thus  inter- 
preted, this  cry  reflects  no  desire  to  ignore  the 
national  interest  and  the  national  responsibilities 
created  by  the  rights  of  a  national  citizenship.  Thus 
understood,  it  is  not  so  much  a  declaration  of  section- 
alism as  a  protest  against  it. 

Too  often  we  find  that  when  our  Northern  jour- 
nalism discusses  wrongs  at  the  North  or  at  the  West, 
it  criticises  the  wrongs,  but  when  it  discusses  wrongs 
at  the  South  it  criticises  the  Sojith.  Such  a  criticism 
tends  to  make  evils  arising  in  the  Southern  States 
issues  not  between  Americans  everywhere  and  the 
foes  everywhere  of   a  true  Americanism,  but  crude 


24  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

and  bitter  issues  between  the  North  and  the  South. 
It  is  a  temper  reflecting  a  Pharisaism  which  is  the 
very  soul  of  sectionalism  —  a  Northern  sectionalism 
as  offensive  as  any  sectionalism  in  our  Southern 
States.  The  North,  as  the  North,  has  nothing  to  do 
with  wrongs  at  the  South.  The  North,  as  the  North, 
is,  in  the  affairs  of  the  South,  a  meddler  pure  and 
simple.  The  Nation,  including  the  South  as  well  as 
the  North,  and  the  West  as  well  as  the  South  and  the 
North,  has  to  do  with  every  issue  in  the  South  that 
touches  any  national  right  of  the  humblest  of  its 
citizens.  Too  long  it  has  been  assumed,  both  at  the 
North  and  at  the  South,  that  the  North  is  the  Nation, 
The  North  is  not  the  Nation.  The  Nation  is  the  life, 
the  thought,  the  conscience,  the  authority,  of  all  the 
land.  The  South  desires  from  every  quarter  —  as 
every  section  should  desire  —  a  true  national  partici- 
pation in  her  interests.  She  wishes  from  every 
spokesman  of  the  Nation,  whether  in  journalism  or 
elsewhere,  a  criticism  national  in  the  exacting  nobility 
of  its  ideals,  national  in  its  moral  vigor,  but  national 
also  in  its  intelligent  and  constructive  sympathy. 

The  development  at  the  South  of  a  larger  sense 
of  nationality  will  be  coincident  with  the  development 
of  democracy.  It  is  a  consummation  which  a  truly 
national  journalism  and  the  forces  of  a  truly  national 
criticism  will  advance.  Such  discussion  is  inevitable. 
It  is  therefore  the  part  of  the  South  both  to  welcome  it 
and  to  inform  it.  This  criticism  may  well  speak  frankly 
and  accurately  of  evils,  of  the  misdirections  of  growth, 
of  failures  both  in  purpose  and  in  accomplishment. 
But  its  effect  will  be  corrective  in  proportion  as  its 
temper  is  fraternal  and  its  animus  is  cooperative. 


I  THE   OLD   IN   THE  NEW  25 

Its  dominant  note  may  well  be  the  note  of  a  dis- 
criminating but  sincere  appreciation.  The  record 
of  the  Civil  War,  upon  its  Southern  side,  closes  with 
a  chapter  of  defeat ;  but  it  is  a  record  of  triumphs 
also,  the  triumphs  of  military  genius,  of  industrial 
resourcefulness,  of  heroic  if  not  unparalleled  sacri- 
fices. Yet  the  historian  will  record  that  the  victories 
which  have  followed  Appomattox  are  perhaps  greater 
than  the  victories  which  preceded  it.  Indeed,  one 
is  reminded  of  that  suggestive  and  moving  passage 
in  which  J.  R.  Green  has  presented  the  dramatic 
moment  in  the  passing  of  Puritan  England :  — 

"A  declaration  from  Breda,  in  which  Charles 
promised  a  general  pardon,  religious  toleration,  and 
satisfaction  to  the  army  was  received  with  a  burst 
of  national  enthusiasm  ;  and  the  old  Constitution  was 
restored  by  a  solemn  vote  of  the  Convention,  that 
*  according  to  the  ancient  and  fundamental  laws  of 
this  Kingdom  the  government  is,  and  ought  to  be,  by 
King,  Lords,  and  Commons.'  The  King  was  at  once 
invited  to  hasten  to  his  realm ;  and  on  the  25th  of 
May,  Charles  landed  at  Dover  and  made  his  way 
amidst  the  shouts  of  a  great  multitude  to  Whitehall. 

"  In  his  progress  to  the  capital  Charles  passed  in 
review  the  soldiers  assembled  on  Blackheath.  .  .  . 
Surrounded  as  they  were  by  a  nation  in  arms,  the 
gloomy  silence  of  their  ranks  awed  even  the  careless 
King  with  a  sense  of  danger.  But  none  of  the  vic- 
tories of  the  New  Model  were  so  glorious  as  the 
victory  which  it  won  over  itself.  Quietly  and  with- 
out a  struggle,  as  men  who  bowed  to  the  inscrutable 
will  of  God,  the  farmers  and  traders  who  had  dashed 
Rupert's   chivalry   to   pieces   on    Naseby  field,  who 


26  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

had  scattered  at  Worcester  the  '  army  of  the  aliens,' 
and  driven  into  helpless  flight  the  sovereign  that  now 
came  'to  enjoy  his  own  again,'  who  had  renewed 
beyond  sea  the  glories  of  Cressy  and  Agincourt,  had 
mastered  the  parhament,  had  brought  a  King  to 
justice  and  the  block,  had  given  laws  to  England, 
and  held  even  Cromwell  in  awe,  became  farmers  and 
traders  again,  and  were  known  among  their  fellow- 
men  by  no  other  sign  than  their  greater  soberness 
and  industry."^ 

Such  was  the  victory  of  Puritanism  over  itself.  It 
was  indeed  a  triumph  of  self-conquest.  And  yet 
there  is,  perhaps,  a  victory  even  more  striking,  in  the 
story  of  the  men  who  turned  their  faces  homeward 
from  Appomattox.  These  went  back,  not  as  trades- 
men to  their  trading,  but  as  men  unused  to  the 
harder  offices  of  industry,  to  take  up,  with  unfamiliar 
labor,  a  grim  and  desperate  struggle  for  life  and 
bread.  These  went  back  to  no  waiting  opportunities, 
to  no  world  of  appointed  tasks,  but  to  a  saddened 
and  desolated  land  in  which  tasks  must  be  found 
and  opportunities  created.  Before  them  was  no 
prospective  enjoyment  of  a  successful  compact  with 
former  foes,  but  the  torturing  vision  of  long  years 
in  which,  through  the  consequences  of  their  defeat, 
their  homes  and  their  meagre  fortunes  were  to  be 
the  scene  of  administrative  "  occupation."  They 
were  to  work  out  their  task,  not  as  members  of  a 
homogeneous  population,  heirs  of  a  single  civic  fate, 
but  confronted  by  the  vast  multitude  of  their  former 
bondmen,  —  dark,  vague,   uncertain    masses ,  —  half- 

1  "  History  of  the  English  People,"  J.  R.  Green,  Vol.  Ill,  Chap. 
XII,  p.  321;   Harper  &  Brothers. 


I  THE  OLD   IN  THE   NEW  27 

pitiful,  half-terrifying,  free  forever  from  the  white 
man's  mastery,  yet  never  free  from  the  brooding  and 
unyielding  heritage  of  the  black  man's  barbaric  past. 
Under  such  conditions  it  was  no  easy  thing  to  win 
the  temper  of  confidence,  to  achieve  the  victories  of 
patience,  to  find  and  actualize  an  industrial  efficiency, 
a  civic  hopefulness,  which  might  yield  again  an  or- 
dered and  happy  world. 

The  South,  still  possessing  much  of  the  fine  genius 
of  the  old  aristocracy,  stood  thus  upon  the  threshold 
of  a  democratic  age.  We  can  hardly  say  that  her 
entrance  was  unimpeded.  She  has  brought  little 
with  her  except  her  native  resources,  her  historic  and 
habitual  faith  in  American  institutions,  her  memories, 
her  instinctive  love  of  order  and  culture  and  beauty, 
her  sense  of  civic  responsibility.  But  she  has  crossed 
the  threshold;  and  she  has  closed  the  door  behind 
her. 


THE   SCHOOLS   OF   THE   PEOPLE 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  SCHOOLS  OF  THE  PEOPLE^ 

Any  description  of  the  conditions  of  public  educa- 
tion at  the  South  must  involve  certain  confessions  of 
inadequacy  and  certain  hearty  celebrations  of  sub- 
stantial progress. 

It  is  not  unnatural  that  there  should  still  be  left 
among  us  a  large  margin  of  the  undone.  That  mar- 
gin still  remains  —  partly  through  the  personalness 
with  which  the  South  has  always  conceived  the  train- 
ing of  the  child,  partly  because  of  the  class  distinc- 
tions of  the  past,  partly  because  of  the  poverty  which 
followed  war,  partly  because  of  the  methods  of  spo- 
liation which  followed  peace.  The  programmes  of 
public  expenditure  which  were  made  difficult  by  pov- 
erty were  made  odious  by  spoliation.  Thus  the  do- 
mestic temper  of  Southern  life,  wrought  upon  by  the 
moral  distrust  of  appropriations  for  public  purposes, 
and  strengthened  by  the  self-absorption  of  private 
industry,  resulted  in  an  exaggerated  individuahsm 
which  became  half  a  dogma  of  poHtics  and  half  a 
philosophy  of  self-reliance.  It  is  therefore  inevitable 
that  democracy  should  have  become,  with  many,  a 

1  An  address  delivered,  in  part,  before  the  General  Session  of  the 
National  Educational  Association,  Boston,  Massachusetts,  July  lo, 
1903. 

31 


32  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

mere  creed  of  public  economies  ;  and  that  self-reliance 
should  have  become,  with  some,  but  a  doctrine  of 
neglect. 

It  may  be  said  in  general  terms  that  the  present 
public  school  system  of  the  South  dates  from  1870.^ 

In  the  period,  however,  which  immediately  followed 
the  Civil  War,  the  dissatisfaction  of  Southern  life  with 
the  political  organization  of  the  State  drew  the  life 
of  the  South  with  increasing  earnestness  into  the  de- 
nominational organizations  of  the  Church.  These,  at 
least,  were  loyally  and  securely  Southern.  It  is  natu- 
ral, therefore,  that  the  actual  educational  organization 
of  the  Southern  States  should  have  first  been  denomi- 
national rather  than  civil,  —  an  organization  which 
left  primary  education  to  the  home,  which  threw  its 
influences  into  academic  and  sometimes  narrow  forms, 
but  which  has  developed  some  of  the  noblest  as  well 
as  some  of  the  most  characteristic  forces  of  Southern 
life. 

But  the  institutions  of  the  Church  represented 
largely,  though  not  exclusively,  the  education  of  the 
aristocracy.  Following  the  period  of  reconstruction 
there  arose  a  demand,  increasingly  self-conscious  and 
increasingly  imperative,  from  the  great  masses  of  an 
awakening  democracy.  As  the  sense  of  democracy 
is  aroused  education  must  be  democratized.  As  the 
multitudes  of  our  Southern  citizenship  came  into  the 
consciousness  of  power  they  turned  instinctively  to 

1  A  State  system  of  free  public  education  was  in  partial  existence  in 
certain  of  the  Southern  States  before  i860.  In  Alabama,  the  Act  of 
February  15,  1854,  may  be  regarded  as  the  beginning  of  the  State  sys- 
tem ;  but  here,  as  elsewhere  throughout  the  South,  the  issue  of  the  Civil 
War  involved  a  reorganization  of  the  system  with  the  inclusion  of  the 
children  of  the  colored  population. 


n  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  THE   PEOPLE  33 

put  their  citizenship  to  school.  It  is  the  way  men 
do.  The  beginnings  of  a  real  democracy,  a  democracy 
no  longer  bewildered  by  the  older  aristocracy  which 
had  been  based  upon  slavery,  no  longer  embarrassed 
by  the  later  bureaucracy  which  had  been  based  upon 
plunder,  drew  all  men  more  closely  together  under 
the  forms  of  the  State,  made  men  seek  in  the  unity 
of  their  civic  heritage  and  in  response  to  the  needs 
of  a  common  citizenship  what  we  call  to-day  the  com- 
mon school.  The  public  school  came  in  response  to 
a  more  largely  distributed  consciousness  of  public 
life,  a  larger  life  of  public  interests  and  of  public 
responsibilities.  As  the  masses  of  men  came  to  share 
the  powers  of  the  State,  as  men  came  to  be  the  State, 
they  wanted  to  do  the  thing  well.  We  find  in  all 
lands  and  with  all  peoples  that  as  democracy  becomes 
a  realit}''  the  school  becomes  a  necessity. 

And  yet,  while  our  public  school  system  at  the 
South  has  been  necessary  as  an  attempt,  —  an  attempt 
which  has  had  the  consecrated  intelligence  and  the 
heroic  industry  of  our  noblest  souls, — we  cannot  say 
that  it  has  thus  far  been  wholly  possible  as  an  achieve- 
ment. Its  aspiration,  however,  is  one  of  the  great 
unifying  and  constructive  forces  in  the  life  of  the 
South  to-day,  an  aspiration  which,  already  expressed 
in  the  deliberate  and  official  policy  of  every  Southern 
State,  would  include  within  the  opportunities  of  a 
free  school  at  the  pubHc  charge  all  the  children  of  its 
citizenship,  rich  and  poor,  white  and  black.  And  that 
aspiration  in  its  generosity  and  its  justice,  is  itself,  I 
submit  to  you,  an  achievement  of  ennobling  and  splen- 
did augury. 

For  this  policy  of  pubHc  education  at  the  South. 


34  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

has  called  us  to  no  holiday  emprise.  The  way  is 
thronged  with  difficulties.  The  task  has  first  involved 
a  problem  of  population.  Ours  is  a  double  popula- 
tion, a  population  divided  by  the  felt  and  instinctive 
diversities  of  race.  The  land  is  occupied  by  two 
families  of  men  between  whom  the  difference  in  color 
is,  perhaps,  the  least  of  the  distinctions  which  divide 
them.  The  differences  in  racial  character  are  accen- 
tuated by  the  differences  of  social  heritage  —  one  is 
the  population  of  the  free-born,  one  has  been  the 
population  of  the  slave-born. 

The  doctrine  of  race  integrity,  the  rejection  of  the 
policy  of  racial  fusion,  is,  perhaps,  the  fundamental 
dogma  of  Southern  life.  It  is  true  that  the  animalism 
of  both  races  has  at  times  attacked  it.  The  formative 
dogmas  of  a  civilization  are  reflected,  however,  not  in 
the  vices  of  the  few,  but  in  the  instincts,  the  laws,  the 
institutions,  the  habits,  of  the  many.  This  dogma  of 
the  social  segregation  of  the  races,  challenged  some- 
times by  fault  of  the  black  man,  challenged  sometimes 
by  fault  of  the  white  man,  is  accepted  and  approved 
and  sustained  by  the  great  masses  of  our  people,  white 
and  black,  as  the  elementary  working  hypothesis  of 
civilization  in  our  Southern  States. 

The  great  masses  of  our  colored  people  have  them- 
selves desired  it.  It  has  made  our  public  school  sys- 
tem, however,  a  double  system ;  and  it  is  inevitable 
that  it  should  have  often  made  the  negro  schools 
inferior  to  the  white  schools.  But  the  social  and 
educational  separation  of  these  races  has  created  the 
opportunity  and  the  vocation  of  the  negro  teacher, 
the  negro  physician,  the  negro  lawyer,  the  negro 
leader  of  whatever  sort.     It  has  not  only  preserved 


II  THE  SCHOOLS  OF  THE  PEOPLE  35 

the  colored  leader  to  the  negro  masses  by  preventing 
the  absorption  of  the  best  negro  life  into  the  life 
of  the  stronger  race ;  it  has  actually  created,  within 
thirty  years,  a  representation  of  negro  leadership  in 
commerce,  in  the  professions,  in  Church,  and  School, 
and  State,  which  is  worthy  of  signal  honor  and  of 
sincere  and  generous  applause.  The  segregation  of  the 
race  has  thrown  its  members  upon  their  own  powers 
and  has  developed  the  qualities  of  resourcefulness. 
The  discriminations  which  they  have  borne  in  a  meas- 
ure by  reason  of  their  slavery,  and  which  have  es- 
tablished the  apartness  of  their  group-life,  are  the 
discriminations  which  are  curing  the  curse  of  slavery 
—  an  undeveloped  initiative  —  and  are  creating  the 
noblest  of  the  gifts  of  freedom,  the  power  of  personal 
and  social  self-dependence.  The  very  process  which 
may  have  seemed  to  some  like  a  policy  of  oppression 
has  in  fact  resulted  in  a  process  of  development. 

Our  problem  of  population  has  thus  involved  a 
double  system  of  public  education.  If  the  duahty  of 
the  system  has  been  of  advantage  to  the  weaker  race, 
it  has  been  more  than  an  advantage  to  the  children 
of  the  stronger.  It  has  been  indispensable  and  im- 
perative. In  social  as  in  personal  achievement  the 
necessities  must  precede  the  charities.  The  primary 
necessity  of  life  in  its  every  stratum  of  development 
is  the  preservation  of  its  own  genius  and  its  own 
gains.  The  matured  manhood  of  a  more  developed 
race  may  have  something  to  give,  should  have  some- 
thing to  give,  through  helpful  contact,  to  the  life  of 
the  undeveloped.  But  the  more  highly  developed 
race  must  not  make  this  contact  through  its  children. 
In  the  interest  of  our  own  further  development  and 


36  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

of  our  own  larger  achievement,  in  the  interest  of  all 
that  our  achievement  and  development  may  mean  in 
a  nobler,  juster,  and  more  generous  guidance  of  a 
lowlier  people,  the  point  of  helpful  contact  must  not 
be  placed  among  the  masses  of  the  young,  and  the 
leverage  of  interracial  cooperation  must  not  seek  its 
fulcrum  upon  the  tender  receptivities  and  the  un- 
guarded immaturities  of  childhood. 

It  is  not  merely  that  the  marked  differences  of 
race  suggest  marked  differences  of  method.  We, 
at  the  South,  are  dealing  with  the  negro,  not  as  an 
individual,  but  as  a  multitude.  In  hundreds  of  our 
Southern  counties  the  negro  population  is  greater 
than  the  white.  In  my  own  home  county,  the 
county  of  the  capital  of  the  State  of  Alabama,  our 
colored  people  outnumber  our  white  people  almost 
three  to  one.  In  an  adjoining  county  the  propor- 
tion of  the  colored  population  to  the  white  popula- 
tion is  six  to  one.  Under  such  conditions  the 
abandonment  of  the  dual  system  of  public  education 
and  the  enforcement  of  a  scheme  of  coeducation 
for  the  races  would  involve,  not  the  occasional  send- 
ing of  a  few  negro  children  to  a  white  school  —  as 
is  your  custom  here  —  but  the  sending  of  a  few 
white  children  to  the  negro  school.  It  would  not 
mean  —  as  some  would  mistakenly  advise  —  the  train- 
ing of  the  children  of  the  weaker  race  in  the  at- 
mosphere and  under  the  associations  of  the  stronger, 
but  the  attempted  training  of  the  children  of  the 
stronger  race  in  the  atmosphere  and  under  the  asso- 
ciations of  the  weaker.  Such  a  policy  would  not 
give  either  promise  or  advantage  to  the  stronger 
race,  to  the  weaker  race,  or  to  any  far-reaching  and 


II  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  THE   PEOPLE  37 

constructive  interest  of  civilization.  A  double  system 
of  public  education  is,  with  all  its  burdens  and  with 
its  varied  difficulties,  an  inevitable  and  unchangeable 
issue  of  our  problem  of  population  at  the  South. ^ 

But  our  problem  of  population  —  turning  now  with 
more  especial  consideration  to  the  white  population 
of  the  South  —  includes  a  formidable  problem  of  dis- 
tribution. It  is  not  only  predominantly  rural;  it  is 
relatively  more  meagre  in  its  numbers  than  many 
have  yet  attempted  to  reahze.  There  are  almost  as 
many  cities  of  twenty-five  thousand  people  in  the  one 
small  State  of  Massachusetts  as  in  all  the  States  of 
the  secession  put  together.  Taking  our  figures  — 
as  throughout  this  address  —  from  the  twelfth  and 
latest  census  of  the  United  States,  we  find,  in  the 
single  State  of  Massachusetts,  twenty  cities  having  a 
white  population  of  more  than  twenty-five  thousand 
—  nearly  twice  as  many  as  the  total  number  of  such 
cities  in  all  the  States  of  the  late  Confederacy.  There 
are,  including  the  State  of  Texas,  in  all  the  States  of 
the  secession  but  twelve  cities  having  a  white  popu- 
lation of  over  twenty-five  thousand. 

The  one  State  of  Massachusetts  alone  has  forty- 
seven  cities  with  a  white  population  of  over  ten 
thousand.  All  the  States  of  the  Confederacy  to- 
gether have  but  thirty-eight  such  cities. 

Moreover,  the  total  aggregate  white  population  of 

^  Even  where  the  negro  children  are  in  a  minority,  as  a  negro 
writer  has  pointed  out  in  the  Congregationalist,  Boston,  May  30, 
1903,  —  it  is  an  injury  to  the  children  of  the  weaker  race  to  be  edu- 
cated in  an  environment  which  is  constantly  subjecting  them  to  adverse 
feeling  and  opinion.  The  result  must  be  the  development  of  a  morbid 
race  consciousness  without  any  compensating  increase  in  racial  self- 
respect. 


38  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

all  the  cities  in  Alabama,  South  Carolina,  North 
Carolina,  and  Tennessee,  having  a  population  of 
ten  thousand  inhabitants  and  over,  does  not  equal 
in  number  the  population  of  the  city  of  Buffalo  or 
the  city  of  Pittsburg. 

The  total  aggregate  white  population  of  the  States 
of  Alabama  and  South  Carolina  does  not  equal  the 
white  population  of  the  city  of  Chicago ;  and  the 
white  population  of  the  present  city  of  New  York 
exceeds  the  aggregate  white  population  of  the 
States  of  Alabama,  Florida,  Louisiana,  Mississippi, 
and  South  Carolina. 

I  have  dwelt  thus  upon  the  relative  meagreness 
of  the  numbers  of  the  white  population  of  the  South 
because  it  is  inevitable  that  that  population  will  have 
to  bear  for  many  years  the  larger  share  of  the  re- 
sponsibilities of  education  and  of  government.  The 
burdens  and  the  peculiar  difficulties  of  the  South  are 
thus  greater,  I  believe,  than  the  world  at  large  has 
yet  appreciated.  Of  direct  taxation  the  negro  con- 
tributes little.  Of  indirect  taxation  he  contributes 
an  honorable  and  increasing  share.  The  rents  pay 
the  taxes  and  the  negro  tenant  helps  to  pay  the  rents. 
In  a  press  telegram  of  the  current  week  I  am  there- 
fore glad  to  find  the  following  characteristic  illustra- 
tion of  the  temper  of  the  South  in  reference  to  the 
common  schools  of  our  colored  people.  The  message 
appears  in  the  columns  of  one  of  the  daily  journals 
of  New  York  City  under  date  of  July  7 :  — 

"  Atlanta,  Georgia,  July  6.  —  Advocates  of  schemes 
to  block  negro  education  by  State  aid  are  in  a 
bad  minority  in  the  House  of  Representatives  of 
the  General  Assembly  of  Georgia.      To-day  after  a 


n  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  THE   PEOPLE  39 

sharp  debate  the  House,  by  an  overwhelming  vote, 
rejected  a  resolution  providing  that  in  the  distribu- 
tion of  money  to  common  schools  the  county  authori- 
ties should  apportion  the  money  among  white  and 
colored  schools  according  to  the  taxable  property  of 
the  two  races.  This  would  have  meant  the  death  of 
negro  education  in  Georgia,  as  the  blacks  pay  only 
one-fifteenth  of  the  taxes,  although  receiving  about 
one-third  of  the  State  appropriation  for  public  schools. 
To-day's  debate  showed  that  the  sentiment  of  the 
Georgia  legislators  is  that  the  State  should  contribute 
to  the  limit  of  its  ability  to  the  common  school  edu- 
cation of  its  colored  people." 

Georgia's  action  is  not  unique.  The  vote  of  her 
legislature  reflects  the  settled  and  established  policy 
of  every  Southern  State.^ 

Returning  to  the  fact  that  the  white  population  of 
New  York  City  exceeds  the  aggregate  white  popula- 
tion of  Alabama,  Florida,  Louisiana,  Mississippi  and 
South  Carolina,  you  will  observe  that  our  problem  of 
population  has  thus  brought  clearly  into  view  some 
of  the  difficulties  of  isolation.  Ours  is  not  only  a 
rural  population ;  in  many  sections  it  is  a  population 
so  small  in  numbers  as  to  be  but  thinly  distributed 
over  large  areas,  with  poor  roads,  with  inadequate 
recourse,  therefore,  to  strong  centres  of  organization, 
and  without  that  consequent  social  efficiency  which 
easily  secures  the  creation  and  the  administration  of 
the  efficient  school. 

In  the  United  States  at  large  20  per  cent  of  the 

^  See  an  effective  criticism  of  the  above  proposal  by  Charles  B. 
Aycock,  Governor  of  North  Carolina,  in  his  biennial  message  to  the 
General  Assembly,  1903,  Raleigh,  N.C.;    Edwards  and  Broughton. 


40  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

school  population  live  in  cities  of  twenty-five  thou- 
sand population  or  over;  at  the  South  our  cities  of 
twenty-five  thousand  contain  but  6  per  cent  of  the 
children  of  our  public  schools.  Our  city  schools, 
however,  are  usually  adequate  and  efficient. 

The  East  has  suffered,  perhaps,  from  an  over- 
municipalization  of  life,  from  the  tendency  of  popu- 
lation cityward.  The  South  has  suffered  from  the 
under-municipalization  of  life,  from  that  too  general 
dependence  upon  agriculture  which  has  kept  almost 
85  per  cent  of  our  population  in  the  country,  and  has 
given  us  cities  few  and  small.  The  building  of  good 
roads,  the  development  of  manufactures,  the  method 
of  school  consolidation,  the  increasing  tendency  to 
apply  the  educational  qualifications  of  the  suffrage  to 
white  men  as  well  as  black,  the  policy  of  our  legisla- 
tures reenforced  by  the  educational  patriotism  of  all 
our  people,  will  at  length  give  us  Southern  schools 
adapted  to  Southern  needs. 

Those  needs  will  slowly  but  surely  have  more  ade- 
quate response.  Our  people  are  resolved  to  have 
their  schools,  despite  the  difficulties  presented  by  our 
problems  of  population,  —  a  population  which  is,  as 
we  have  seen,  biracial  in  character,  comparatively 
small  in  number,  comparatively  rural  in  its  distribu- 
tion,—  and  despite  the  fact  that  our  task  of  public 
education  involves  not  only  these  grave  problems  of 
population  but  as  grave  a  problem  of  resources. 

The  figures  of  our  national  census  show  that  from 
i860  to  1870  there  was  a  fall  of  $2,100,000,000  in  the 
assessed  value  of  Southern  property  and  that  the 
period  of  reconstruction  added,  in  the  years  from 
1870  to  1880,  another  $67,000,000  to  the  loss. 


n  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  THE   PEOPLE  41 

In  i860  the  assessed  value  of  property  in  Massa- 
chusetts was  $777,cxx),cxx),  as  contrasted  with 
$5,200,000,000  ^  for  the  whole  South ;  but  at  the 
close  of  the  war  period  Massachusetts  had,  in  1870, 
$1,590,000,000  in  taxable  property,  as  contrasted  with 
but  $3,000,000,000  for  the  whole  South.  The  stand- 
ards of  assessment  are  probably  much  more  exacting 
at  the  East  than  at  the  South,  yet  this  consideration 
does  not  operate  wholly  to  erase  the  contrast  which 
remains.  Such  had  been  the  shrinkage  in  values 
at  the  South,  such  had  been  the  relative  increase 
in  values  in  New  England,  that  the  one  small  State 
of  Massachusetts  had  more  than  one-half  as  much  of 
taxable  property  as  the  combined  wealth  of  all  our 
Southern  States. 

The  very  theory  of  emancipation  was  that  the  fate 
of  the  black  man  was  the  responsibility  of  the  Nation, 
yet  the  issue  of  war  left  the  negro  in  his  helplessness 
at  the  threshold  of  the  South  ;  and  the  South,  with 
the  gravest  problems  of  our  civiHzation  challenging  her 
existence  and  her  peace,  was  expected  to  assume  the 
task  of  the  education  of  two  populations  out  of 
the  poverty  of  one.  I  confess  that  I  think  the  con- 
science of  the  South  has  something  to  say  to  the 
conscience  and  the  opulence  of  the  Nation,  when, 
with  millions  for  battleships,  tens  of  millions  for 
armaments,  millions  for  public  buildings,  and  tens  of 
millions  for  rivers  and  harbors,  the  Nation  allows  the 
academic  fabric  of  paper  theories  to  stand  between 
the   vast   resources   of    its   wealth    and   the   human 

1  The  fact  that  slaves  were  included  in  such  estimates  does  not 
lessen  the  economic  catastrophe  represented  in  the  loss  of  a  form  of 
property  in  which  so  much  of  energy  and  wealth  had  become  involved. 


42  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

appeal,  North  or  South  or  East  or  West,  of  the  chil- 
dren of  its  citizenship. 

A  democracy  which  imposes  an  equal  distribution 
of  political  obligation  must  find  some  way  to  afford  a 
more  equal  distribution  of  educational  opportunity. 
To  a  national  philanthropy  or  to  our  national  legisla- 
tion there  should  be  an  appealing  significance  in  the 
fact  that  the  annual  expenditure  for  public  education 
in  the  United  States  at  large  is  —  per  capita  of  the 
pupils  in  average  attendance  —  $21.38,  that  in  the 
great  States  of  the  West  the  average  expenditure  is 
$3^ -59,  while  for  such  States  as  Alabama  and  the 
Carolinas  this  expenditure  is  approximately  but 
$4.50.  Let  us  not,  in  contrasting  these  figures,  for- 
get the  educational  heroism  of  the  South.  Unques- 
tionably the  South  must  call  more  freely  and  more 
generously  into  play  the  policy  of  local  taxation  by 
the  school  district  or  by  the  county,  but  of  the  State 
revenues  for  general  purposes  50  per  cent,  in  Ala- 
bama and  the  Carolinas,  are  appropriated  to  the 
support  of  public  education.^ 

It  is  inevitable,  however,  that  our  problems  of  popu- 
lation, our  problem  of  an  isolated  rural  life,  and  our 
problem  of  resources  should  have  resulted  in  the  illit- 
eracy of  the  present.  If  I  dwell  for  a  few  minutes 
upon  the  figures  as  to  the  illiterate,  I  do  so  with  the 
reminder  that  there  are  worse  things  in  a  democracy 
than  illiteracy,  and  with  the  passing  assurance  that  I 

1  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  1890  there  was  "expended  for 
pubhc  schools  on  each  $100  of  true  valuation  of  all  real  and  personal 
property  "  22.3  cents  in  Arkansas  and  24.4  cents  in  Mississippi,  as  com- 
pared with  20.5  cents  in  New  York  and  20.9  cents  in  Pennsylvania. 
See  Report  of  the  U.  S.  Commissioner  of  Education,  1902,  Vol.  I.  p.  xci. 


n  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  THE   PEOPLE  43 

shall  soon  be  able  to  turn  to  the  brighter  side.  But 
remedies  and  congratulations  will  not  avail  us  save  as 
we  frankly  and  resolutely  face  the  facts. 

There  are  in  our  Southern  States  more  than 
3,500,000  souls  ten  years  of  age  and  over,  who  can- 
not read  and  write ;  nearly  50  per  cent  of  the  colored 
population,  and  12.7  per  cent  of  the  white. ^  Of  the 
native  white  population  of  our  whole  country,  ten 
years  of  age  and  over,  the  South  has  24  per  cent; 
but  of  the  native  white  illiteracy  of  our  country,  the 
South  has  64  per  cent. 

There  are  in  the  United  States  231  counties  in 
which  20  per  cent  and  over  of  the  white  men  of 
voting  age  cannot  read  and  write.  Of  these  231 
counties,  210  are  in  our  Southern  States.^ 

Taking  a  few  of  our  States  individually,  we  find 
that  —  among  the  white  population  ten  years  of  age 
and  over  —  there  are  54,000  illiterates  in  South  Caro- 
lina. That  is,  for  South  Carolina  or  for  any  other 
Southern  State,  a  very  large  number  of  white  people. 
It  is  only  13.5  per  cent  of  the  total  white  population 

^  The  illiteracy  of  the  native  white  population  of  the  Southern 
States  ranges  from  8.6  per  cent  in  Florida,  8  per  cent  in  Mississippi, 
and  6.1  per  cent  in  Texas,  to  17.3  per  cent  in  Louisiana,  and  19.5  per 
cent  in  North  Carolina;  as  contrasted  with  0.8  per  cent  in  Nebraska, 
1.3  per  cent  in  Kansas,  2.1  per  cent  in  Illinois,  1.2  per  cent  in  New 
York,  and  0.8  per  cent  in  Massachusetts.  A  far  juster  comparison, 
however,  is  that  which  indicates  the  contrast,  not  between  the  South 
and  the  rest  of  the  country  in  igcx),  but  between  the  South  of  1880  and 
the  South  of  to-day.  This  progress  is  indicated  in  Table  V  of  the 
Appendix,  p.  300. 

2  See  Appendix  A,  Table  VIII.  It  will  be  noted  that  a  number  of 
the  counties  classified  as  in  the  South,  and  a  number  outside  the 
South,  include  in  the  "white"  population  —  on  the  border  of  Mexico 
and  on  the  Canadian  frontier  —  an  appreciable  foreign  element. 


44  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

over  the  age  of  nine.  Yet  this  is  a  company  of  white 
people  greater  in  number  than  the  aggregate  white 
population  of  the  five  largest  cities  of  the  State,  — 
Charleston,  Columbia,  Spartanburg,  Greenville,  and 
Sumter. 

The  white  illiterates  of  Georgia  are  but  11.9  per 
cent  of  the  white  population  ten  years  of  age  and 
over,  but  their  number  exceeded  in  1900  the  number 
of  the  aggregate  white  population  of  Georgia's  three 
largest  cities,  —  Atlanta,  Savannah,  and  Augusta. 

The  white  illiterates  of  Tennessee,  14.  i  per  cent 
of  the  white  population  ten  years  of  age  and  over, 
exceeded  in  1900  the  number  of  the  total  white  popu- 
lation of  her  six  largest  cities,  —  Nashville,  Memphis, 
Knoxville,  Chattanooga,  Clarksville,  and  Jackson. 

The  white  illiterates  of  Alabama,  nearly  15  per 
cent  of  the  white  population  of  ten  years  of  age  and 
over,  exceeded  in  1900  the  number  of  the  aggregate 
white  population  of  her  fifteen  largest  cities ;  and  in 
1900  the  number  of  the  white  illiterates  of  North 
Carolina,  19.4  per  cent,  was  more  than  double  the 
number  of  the  combined  white  population  of  her  six- 
teen largest  cities.^ 

The  possible  surprise  occasioned  by  these  con- 
trasted totals  should  suggest  to  us  that  such  figures 
teach  much  more  than  the  relative  magnitude  of  the 
number  of  the  illiterate.  The  figures  indicate,  not 
only  the  number  of  the  white  illiterates  in  the  State, 
but  the  relatively  small  proportion  of  the  white  popu- 
lation now  found  within  the  cities.  Such  comparisons 
indicate  the  presence  of  many  colored  people  in  our 

1  See  Twelfth  Census  of  the  U.S.  (1900),  Vol.  I,  Table  23,  and  Re- 
port of  the  U.S.  Commissioner  of  Education,  1902,  Vol.  U,  p.  2316. 


II  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  THE   PEOPLE  45 

Southern  cities,  but  they  especially  indicate  a  fact 
upon  which  I  have  already  dwelt  as  of  cardinal  and 
conspicuous  importance,  the  fact  that  the  population 
of  the  South  is  still  characteristically  and  preponder- 
antly rural. 

It  is  not  as  a  prophet  of  calamity  that  I  have  dwelt 
upon  some  of  the  facts  as  to  our  illiteracy.  The 
problem  is  formidable,  but  no  problem  need  be  the 
occasion  of  discouragement  so  long  as  that  problem 
is  apparently  yielding  to  the  forces  of  its  reduction. 
Relatively  and  actually,  illiteracy  is  not  gaining  upon 
the  schools.  The  schools,  in  spite  of  all  our  diffi- 
culties, are  gaining  upon  our  illiteracy.  Taking  our 
population  of  prospective  or  possible  voters,  the  male 
population,  white  and  black,  ten  years  of  age  and 
over,  we  find  that  there  is  not  a  State  in  the  South 
which  has  not  largely  reduced  its  illiteracy  within 
the  twenty  years  from  1880  to  1900. 

Upon  the  other  hand,  as  I  take  some  kindly  satis- 
faction in  reminding  you,  there  is  but  one  State .  in 
New  England  —  Rhode  Island  —  which  has  not  added 
both  to  the  percentage  and  to  the  aggregate  of  its 
male  illiteracy  since  1880.^  Your  percentages  of  gen- 
eral male  illiteracy  are  very  much  lower  than  our 
own,  but  they  are  a  little  greater  to-day  than  they 
were  twenty  years  ago.  If  your  figures  must  include 
the  foreigner,  ours  must  include  the  negro.  New 
York  had  over  forty-seven  thousand  more  of  male 
illiterates  in  1900  than  in  1880;  Pennsylvania  had  in 
1900  over  sixty-two  thousand  more  such  illiterates  than 
in  1880;  Massachusetts,  over  twenty-three  thousand 
more  than  in  1880;  and  the  percentages  have  grown 

^  See  Twelfth  Census  of  the  U.S.,  Vol.  H,  Table  LV,  p.  ci. 


46  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

with  the  aggregates.  Totals  have  grown  a  little  in 
some  of  the  States  of  the  South,  but  including  even  the 
colored  population,  the  percentage  of  male  illiterates 
has  been  reduced  in  Alabama  from  49  to  32  per  cent; 
in  Tennessee  from  36  to  20  per  cent;  in  Georgia 
from  48  to  29  per  cent ;  in  North  Carolina  from  46 
to  27  per  cent;  in  Arkansas  from  35  to  19  per  cent. 
In  the  Southern  States  our  public  schools,  with  all 
their  embarrassments,  are  overtaking  our  illiteracy  ; 
in  some  of  the  Eastern  States  the  illiteracy  of  future 
voters  has  gained  just  a  little  upon  the  range  and 
contact  of  the  public  schools.  Illiteracy  is,  in  fact, 
not  a  sectional,  but  a  national,  problem  ;  and  I  think 
that  we  must  everywhere  declare  that  a  democracy 
which  still  comprises  more  than  six  millions  of  people 
who  cannot  even  read  and  write  has  not  yet  ade- 
quately solved  the  problem  of  popular  education. 

I  find,  however,  no  hopelessness  in  the  illiteracy  of 
the  South,  because,  as  I  have  suggested,  we  are  now 
making  decisive  reductions  in  its  volume.  I  find 
no  hopelessness  in  it,  because  it  is  the  illiteracy,  not  of 
the  degenerate,  but  simply  of  the  unstarted.  Our 
unlettered  white  people  are  native  American  in  stock, 
virile  in  faculty  and  capacity,  free  in  spirit,  unbroken, 
uncorrupted,  fitted  to  learn,  and  worthy  of  the  best 
that  their  country  and  their  century  may  bring  them. 

To  speak  hopefully  of  the  taught  is  to  speak  even 
more  hopefully,  even  more  confidently,  of  the  teacher. 
The  relative  poverty  of  the  South  has  its  compensa- 
tions. It  places  at  the  command  of  the  public  school 
system  of  the  Southern  States  a  teaching  force  of 
broad  ambitions,  of  real  culture,  and  of  generous  re- 
finement.    The  high  social  standard  of  our  teaching 


n  THE  SCHOOLS  OF  THE  PEOPLE  47 

personnel  is  our  assurance  that  the  training  of  the 
children  of  the  South  is  in  the  hands  of  worthy  repre- 
sentatives of  its  thought  and  feeling.  We  know  that 
in  its  public  school  system  the  South  of  to-day  is 
touching  through  its  best  the  life  and  the  institutions 
of  to-morrow. 

The  crowning  argument  of  our  hopefulness  lies,  how- 
ever, in  the  educational  enthusiasm  of  all  our  people. 
Alabama,  within  five  years,  has  doubled  her  general 
appropriations  for  public  education.  The  masses  of 
a  sincere  people  are  taught  the  great  realities  of 
order,  liberty,  and  culture,  not  merely  by  what  they 
have,  but  by  what  they  long  to  have.  The  things 
that  a  whole  people,  in  the  passions  of  their  sacrifice, 
have  resolved  to  do  are  of  more  significance  and  of 
more  importance  in  the  history  of  a  democracy  than 
anything  that  they  may  have  failed  to  do. 

But  the  Nation  must  be  considerate  of  the  South 
and  the  South  must  be  patient  with  herself.  The 
burden  of  responsibility  among  us  must  long  fall 
heavily  upon  the  few.  We  have  seen  that  there  are 
in  our  Southern  States  210  counties  in  which  20 
per  cent,  or  over,  of  the  white  men  of  voting  age  can- 
not read  and  write.  Place  to  one  side  the  great  un- 
lettered masses  of  our  colored  population,  add  to  these 
the  unlettered  numbers  of  our  white  population,  and  you 
will  at  once  see  that  the  number  which  remains  has  a 
part  to  play  which  is  so  serious  in  its  responsibilities 
and  so  far-reaching  in  its  moral  and  civic  significance 
that  the  South  may  well  receive  the  large-tempered 
understanding  of  all  the  lovers  of  mankind,  and  of 
all  the  wise  befrienders  of  the  State. 

A  final  and  happy  element  of  hopefulness  lies  in 


48  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

the  thought  that  if  our  system  of  public  education  is 
largely  uncompleted,  we  can  build,  in  completing  it, 
by  the  light  of  the  gains  and  the  errors  of  older  com- 
monwealths. Tardiness  should  save  from  false  starts 
and  should  protect  us  from  traditional  mistakes.  I 
trust  that  we  shall  build  in  such  a  manner  as  more 
largely  to  practicalize  and  moralize  the  general  sys- 
tem of  public  education.  I  trust  that  our  conscious- 
ness of  the  problem  of  illiteracy  will  not  lead  us  to 
the  mistaken  conclusion  that  the  supreme  task  of  any 
system  of  schools  is  the  mere  removal  of  illiteracy. 
The  school  must  stand,  rather,  for  a  larger  and  larger 
measure  of  trained  intelligence,  of  controlled  and 
sobered  will,  of  sound,  resourceful,  and  efficient  life. 

I  trust  that  we  shall  realize,  moreover,  that  the 
fullest  duty  of  the  modern  school,  of  the  public 
school  in  a  democracy,  is  a  duty  not  only  to  culture, 
but  to  citizenship.  The  State-supported  school  must 
give  the  State  support,  —  support  as  it  teaches  with 
a  healing  wisdom  and  an  impartial  patriotism  the  his- 
tory of  the  past;  support  as  it  looks  out  into  the 
track  of  an  over-freighted  destiny  and  clears  and 
steadies  the  vision  of  the  future ;  but  first  of  all,  sup- 
port to  the  Nation  in  this  day  —  in  this  day  because 
this  day  is  not  supremely  our  fathers'  or  our  chil- 
dren's, but  uniquely  and  supremely  ours. 

The  schools  of  a  people,  the  schools  of  a  7'eal  peo- 
ple, must  be,  primarily,  not  the  moral  gymnasia  of 
reminiscence  or  the  transcendent  platforms  of  future 
outlook.  They  must  touch  this  day's  earth  and  this 
day's  men  through  the  truths  and  the  perils  of  to-day. 
They  must  be  instructors  of  the  contemporary  civic 
conscience.     And  in  this  hour,  I  take  it,  they  must 


II  THE   SCHOOLS   OF  THE   PEOPLE  49 

help  the  State  to  bring  to  men  a  profounder  and 
therefore  a  simpler  reverence  for  the  institutions  and 
the  processes  of  pubUc  order.  For  a  long  time  we 
have  heard  that  democracy  is  an  institution  of  lib- 
erty ;  but  if  democracy  be  not  also  an  institution  of 
public  order,  liberty  will  not  long  be  an  institution 
of  democracy.  Where  minorities  —  mob  minorities, 
North  or  South  or  East  or  West  —  presume  to  admin- 
ister the  laws  of  the  majority,  the  elementary  compact 
of  democracy  is  dissolved.  The  mob  which  abandons 
the  processes  of  social  self-control  weakens  the  per- 
sonal self-control  which  stays  and  conquers  crime, 
and  increases  by  its  ferocities  the  very  animahsm  it 
has  attempted  to  destroy.  Its  instructions  in  horror 
touch  the  minds  of  tens  of  thousands,  its  barbarities 
burn  to-day  the  guilty  and  set  aflame  the  hates  and 
humors  which  to-morrow  burn  the  innocent. 

Such  spectacles  are  national  phenomena,  challeng- 
ing everywhere  the  national  forces  of  American  good 
sense,  and  demanding  of  us  whether  the  mere  gravity 
of  the  crime  or  the  mere  weakness  of  the  constabu- 
lary is  enough  to  excuse  any  American  community  in 
abandoning  the  safeguards  of  justice  and  the  solemn 
processes  of  trial  for  the  processes  of  a  social  hysteria 
which  divides  its  noisome  interest  between  the  details 
of  the  crime  and  the  souvenirs  of  the  execution.  Are 
these  the  august  and  reverend  trappings  of  Justice  in 
a  democracy  ? 

Our  schools  must  teach  our  children  what  their 
country  is.  Our  schools,  North  and  South,  must 
help  men  to  see  that  liberty  of  government  means 
that  there  is  no  liberty  except  through  being  gov- 
erned, that  being  governed  and  being  governable  are 


50  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap,  il 

largely  the  measure  of  our  distance  from  the  jungle; 
that  a  governed  and  governable  people,  when  chal- 
lenged by  the  sickening  atrocities  of  crime,  by  the 
torturing  spectacles  of  lust  and  hate,  first  have  a 
sober  recourse  to  the  thought,  not  of  what  is  due  to 
the  criminal,  but  of  what  is  due  to  their  civilization, 
their  country,  and  their  children. 

For  we  may  be  well  assured  that,  whether  we  teach 
through  the  school  or  not,  the  teaching  is  being  done  ; 
for  society  itself  is  the  final  educational  institution  of 
our  human  life.  Not  only  through  school  and  home 
and  Church,  but  through  the  habits  of  our  commerce, 
through  books,  through  each  day's  press,  through  our 
posters  on  the  streets,  the  music  in  our  parks,  our 
amusements  and  our  recreations,  —  above  all,  through 
that  great  enfolding,  effectual  instrument  of  our  social 
self-projection,  the  public  opinion  of  our  day,  our 
children  are  being  put  to  school, 

I  pray  that  within  these  varied  orbits  the  people's 
schools  may  do  their  schooling  well,  not  as  detached 
or  isolated  shops  of  truths  and  notions,  but  as  deliberate 
and  conscious  factors  of  a  sounder  social  equilibrium. 
I  pray  that  they,  North  and  South  and  East  and 
West,  may  take  their  places  as  the  organs  of  that 
force  of  social  gravity,  that  moral  dynamic  which  in 
the  University  of  the  World  keeps  the  poise  of  fac- 
tions and  classes,  upholds  the  authority  of  institu- 
tions, the  majesty  and  the  happiness  of  government, 
the  worth  of  laws,  the  high  securities  of  freedom  — 
that  moral  dynamic  which  wise  men  have  called  the 
fear  of  God,  the  force  of  affection  and  sobriety  which 
holds  life  to  reverence  and  reverence  to  reason,  —  as, 
through  their  uncrossing  pathways,  the  stars  flash, 
star-lisrhted,  round  their  suns. 


A   CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP 


CHAPTER   III 

A  CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP 


The  movement  of  democracy  at  the  South  presents, 
essentially,  a  task  of  constructive  statesmanship.  _  If 
the  representatives  of  political  and  party  action  are 
earnestly  concerning  themselves  with  the  problems  of 
popular  education,  it  is  because  such  problems  are 
the  reflection,  not  only  of  the  desire  of  the  people,  but 
of  the  need  of  the  State.  It  is  understood  that  uni- 
versal education  is,  in  the  broadest  sense,  no  mere 
topic  of  the  educator.  It  is  the  interest  of  the 
citizen. 

Illiteracy  is  being  recognized  with  admirable  can- 
dor and  increasing  courage.  Here  and  there  a  voice 
is  heard  which  speaks  with  depreciation  of  its  signifi- 
cance. There  is  an  occasional  note  of  denial  and 
resentment.  But  with  increasing  knowledge  denial 
is  abandoned,  and  with  increasing  reflection  resent- 
ment passes  into  concern,  and  concern  into  a  deepen- 
ing solicitude  both  for  the  unfortunate  and  for  the 
South.  Men  recognize  that  the  greater  reproach  is 
not  illiteracy,  but  indifference  to  it.  They  perceive 
that  its  significance  cannot  be  offset  by  dwelling  upon 
the  admitted  and  often  darker  evils  of  other  sections. 
When  the  life  of  the  State  is  burdened  or  imperilled 

S3 


54  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

by  unfortunate  conditions,  the  word  of  a  true  patriot- 
ism is  that  which  recognizes  these  conditions  in  order 
to  remove  them.  It  is  never  that  word  of  superficial 
partisanship  which,  lulling  to  sleep  the  consciousness 
of  need,  gives  permanence  and  increase  to  the  need 
itself.  If  States  do  not  grow  wise  by  forgetting  their 
knowledge,  it  is  equally  true  that  they  do  not  add  to 
their  knowledge  by  forgetting  their  ignorance. 

The  South  has  been  moved,  however,  by  the  fate 
of  the  unfortunate  as  well  as  by  the  need  of  the 
State.  Her  interest  in  the  unlettered  masses  of  her 
white  people  is  due  to  no  motive  of  condescension  or 
contempt.  Most  of  them  are  a  people  of  pure  and 
vigorous  stock  —  our  "contemporary  ancestors,"  as 
the  president  of  Berea  has  described  them.  Many  of 
them  are  distinguished  by  peculiar  intelligence  and 
force.  Some  of  them  are  people  of  property.  An 
occasional  reactionary  spirit  declares  that  because  he 
esteems  and  loves  them,  and  because  they  are  better 
than  many  of  the  hterate  population  of  other  sections, 
the  movement  which  reveals  their  ignorance  and 
insists  upon  their  education  is  to  be  resisted.  The 
answer  of  the  South,  as  a  whole,  is  that  —  because  she 
esteems  and  loves  them  —  their  children  are  entitled 
to  the  broadest  opportunities  and  the  best  advantages 
which  life  may  offer;  that  any  movement  which 
reveals  their  ignorance  in  order  to  bring  them  knowl- 
edge, which  would  increase  their  knowledge  not  upon 
the  ground  of  their  incapacity,  but  upon  the  ground 
of  their  value  to  society,  which  asserts  their  right  to 
the  world's  best,  and  the  world's  right  to  their  best, 
is  a  movement  to  be  commended  and  reenforced. 

There  was  a  time  when   illiteracy  was  a  normal 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  55 

factor  in  society.  That  time  has  passed.  Illiteracy 
is  abnormal;  literacy  is  the  normal  assumption  of 
civilization.  When  practically  all  men  —  all  of  the 
general  masses  of  mankind  —  were  illiterate,  literacy 
was  hardly  an  element  in  the  movement  of  popu- 
lar progress  or  in  the  play  of  industrial  competi- 
tion. Such  conditions  have  passed  forever.  Literacy 
in  the  greater  fraction  and  iUiteracy  in  the  smaller 
fraction  of  population  means  that  the  smaller  frac- 
tion is  subjected  to  a  relative  disadvantage  in 
every  movement  of  experience,  whether  religious, 
social,  political,  or  industrial.  It  is  shut  out,  reli- 
giously, from  the  broader  outlook  upon  that  word 
of  God  which  is  daily  uttered  in  the  increasing 
freedom  and  fulness  of  human  life ;  it  is  shut  out, 
socially,  from  that  wholesome  largeness  of  temper 
which  results  from  the  knowledge  of  a  more  varied 
world  of  men  and  things;  it  is  shut  out,  politically, 
from  the  educative  influence  of  those  great  national 
debates  which  form  the  instruction  of  the  plain  man 
in  economic  truth  and  democratic  policies,  thus  help- 
ing to  make  of  citizenship  no  mere  local  perquisite, 
but  a  national  privilege.  The  fraction  of  the  ilHter- 
ate  is  shut  off,  industrially,  from  that  confidence  which 
results  from  being  able  to  read  what  others  read,  to 
know  what  others  know,  and  so  to  do,  to  the  freest 
and  best  advantage,  the  business  of  life.  The  farmer 
or  the  laborer  who  can  read  and  write  finds  in  that 
power  the  enlargement  of  his  market.  He  is  not 
only  more  fitted  to  work  or  to  produce,  he  can  be 
Informed  in  a  broader  sense  as  to  the  conditions  of 
industry,  and  can  sell  to  more  intelligent  advantage 
his  product  or  his  labor.     It  is  evident  that,  here  and 


56  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

there,  the  individual  member  of  society  may  rise  by 
sheer  force  of  some  pecuHarity  of  character,  or  some 
chance  of  opportunity,  out  of  many  of  the  limitations 
which  illiteracy  imposes.  But  it  is  true,  upon  the 
whole,  that  for  the  great  masses  of  men  in  the  civili- 
zation of  our  world  to-day,  illiteracy  is  the  symbol  of 
non-participation. 

II 

Thus,  in  relation  to  the  fuller  life  of  our  civiliza- 
tion, there  are  in  our  Southern  States  two  classes 
of  non-participants,  —  the  masses  of  our  negroes  and 
the  illiterates  of  our  white  population.  There  is  now 
little  question  at  the  South  as  to  the  nature  of  her 
policy  toward  the  latter.  Their  freest  education  and 
equipment  is  almost  everywhere  recognized  as  the 
supreme  interest  of  society  and  the  State.  The  na- 
ture of  the  policy  of  the  South  toward  the  former,  the 
task  of  the  education  of  the  negro,  presents  a  prob- 
lem upon  which  there  has  been  much  of  serious  and 
exphcit  difference.  Writing  from  within  the  South, 
and  as  a  part  of  the  South,  I  may  wish  the  negro 
were  not  here,  but  my  wishing  so  would  not  provide 
him  either  with  adequate  transportation  or  another 
destiny.  He  is  here  among  us.  We  are  face  to  face 
with  him.  We  must  take  him  as  we  find  him,  and 
talk  about  him  as  he  is.  The  problem  he  presents  is 
one  which  silence  has  not  dissipated,  nor  indifference 
answered ;  which  bitterness  may  always  intensify, 
but  which  bitterness  has  never  solved.  There  are 
those  who  tell  us  that  the  negro  is  to  go  to  Africa. 
How  long  will  it  take  to  persuade  the  negro  he 
should  go  .■"     Then  how  long  will  it  take  to  persuade 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP  57 

the  white  man  to  let  him  go  ?  Then  how  long  will 
the  going  take  ?  If  he  fails,  he  will  return ;  if  he 
succeeds,  the  white  man  will  follow  him  upon  his 
lands,  as  he  has  followed  the  Indian  here  and  the 
Filipino  across  the  seas,  and,  competing  with  him 
upon  his  new  soil,  will  create  the  same  difficulties 
which  were  here  abandoned.  The  great  problems 
of  civilization,  for  individuals  or  for  races,  are  not 
solved  by  deserting  them. 

In  the  meanwhile  nine  millions  of  them  are  here. 
What  are  we  to  do  with  them  .-• 

There  are  some  who  tell  us  that  "  as  a  matter  of 
scientific  fact "  the  negro  death-rate  is  a  little  greater 
than  the  negro  birth-rate,  and  that  therefore  the  negro 
is  to  become  extinct.  But  a  busy  world  cannot  count 
so  much  on  "sociological  data"  as  to  pause  to  calcu- 
late the  proper  estimates  of  extinction  for  a  race  which 
does  its  dying  by  doubling  its  numbers  within  forty 
years. 

And  in  the  long  generations  through  which  the  race 
is  dying,  what  are  we  to  do .'' 

If  education  as  a  power  of  real  and  constructive 
good  is  of  value  to  a  living  race,  to  a  race  achieving 
and  succeeding,  it  is  of  still  greater  value  to  a  failing 
race.  If  society  needs  the  corrective  and  upbuilding 
force  of  education  to  protect  it  against  ignorance  in 
the  wholly  capable,  the  ignorance  of  the  partially 
incapable  requires — for  the  protection  and  upbuild- 
ing of  society  —  not  less  education,  but  more,  an  edu- 
cation practical  in  its  forms  but  human  and  liberal  in 
its  spirit. 

And  yet  it  were  folly  to  ignore  the  fact  that  the 
policy  of  negro  education  has  been  often  and  seriously 


58  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

questioned.  One  may  well  write  of  it,  however,  not 
as  an  alien  policy,  but  as  a  policy  of  the  South,  inas- 
much as  negro  education  has  been  for  thirty  years  — 
under  local  administrations  elected  by  the  people  — 
the  official  and  authoritative  policy  of  every  Southern 
State.  If,  therefore,  I  speak  here  at  length  of  the 
schooling  and  the  training  of  this  backward  race,  I 
do  so,  not  because  it  is  a  duty  which  the  South  has 
ignored,  but  because  the  South,  with  generous  fore- 
sight and  incalculable  patience,  has  so  largely  attempted 
to  discharge  it. 

Three  objections,  however,  have  partially  attended 
and  embarrassed  the  maintenance  of  this  policy  of 
our  Southern  States. 

I.  There  has  been  opposition  to  the  policy  upon 
the  ground  that  the  education  of  the  schools  would 
lead  to  vanity  in  life ;  that  the  supposed  tendencies 
of  the  negro  would  increasingly  draw  his  ambition 
in  the  direction  of  the  higher  education,  and  that  the 
higher  education  of  the  negro  would  imperil  the  inter- 
ests of  race  integrity. 

II.  There  has  been  opposition  to  the  negro  com- 
mon school,  —  first,  upon  the  ground  that  it  has  done 
too  little,  inasmuch  as  it  has  left  the  general  life  of 
the  race  so  largely  unaffected ;  secondly,  upon  the 
ground  that  it  has  done  too  much,  and  has  "  spoiled 
good  field  hands  by  teaching  books." 

III.  There  has  been  opposition,  not  only  to  lower 
education  and  to  higher  education,  but  also  to  indus- 
trial education,  —  to  industrial  education  upon  the 
ground  that  this  form  of  negro  training  must  result 
in  industrial  friction  and  competitive  warfare  between 
the  races. 


in  A   CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP  59 

It  would  be  strange  indeed  if  education  —  a  policy 
of  God  long  before  it  was  a  policy  of  man,  a  policy 
of  the  universe  long  before  it  was  a  policy  of  society 
—  were  to  find  its  first  defeat  at  the  negro's  hands. ^ 
And  yet  in  each  of  these  objections  there  lies  the  force 
of  a  half-truth,  a  half-truth  to  be  frankly  recognized, 
and  to  be  fully  understood  before  it  can  be  fully  met. 
I  believe,  however,  that  the  long-standing  policy  of 
the  South  has  been  fully  justified,  and  that  such  mis- 
apprehensions as  have  existed  have  arisen  partly  from 
the  misunderstanding  of  the  facts  and  partly  from 
certain  evident  errors  in  our  traditional  educational 
methods. 

I.  In  dealing  with  the  familiar  question  as  to  the 
"increasing  perils  of  the  negro's  higher  education," 
let  us  see,  first  of  all,  if  these  perils  are  increasing ; 
then  we  may  inquire  as  to  how  far  they  exist  at  all. 
Let  us  see  how  much  higher  education  the  negro  is 
getting,  not  merely  at  the  South,  but  from  anybody 
anywhere. 

Let  me  say  at  once,  however,  that  the  South  can- 
not well  be  opposed  to  the  higher  education  of  those 
who  are  fitted  for  it.^  Where  individual  capacity 
exists,  the  only  thing,  the  only  right  and  wise  thing 

^  See  Report  of  the  Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction  of  North 
Carolina,  1902,  p.  viii.  Superintendent  Joyner's  report  should  be  care- 
fully read  in  forming  any  adequate  estimate  of  the  real  temper  of  the 
South  in  reference  to  negro  education. 

2  See  also  an  admirable  paper  on  "  Negro  Education,"  by  W.  B.  Hill, 
Chancellor  of  the  University  of  Georgia,  in  the  Proceedings  of  the 
Sixth  Conference  for  Education  in  the  South,  1903,  p.  206,  published 
by  The  Committee  on  Publication,  Room  607,  54  WilHam  Street,  New 
York  City. 


6o  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

in  the  world,  to  do  with  it  is  to  equip  it  and  direct  it. 
The  repression  of  it  will  result,  not  in  its  extinction, 
but  in  its  perversion.  A  thwarted  and  perverted 
capacity  is  a  peril  both  to  the  individual  and  to  the 
State.  Repression  is  not  a  remedy  for  anything. 
The  repression  and  perversion  of  the  capacities  of 
our  greatest  negro  would  have  made  him  the  most 
dangerous  factor  in  Southern  life.  Such  capacities 
may  be  seldom  found.  Where,  however,  these  capaci- 
ties exist,  there  is  neither  joy  nor  safety  nor  right  nor 
common  sense  in  the  belittling  of  a  thing  which  God 
has  given,  or  in  the  attempted  destruction  of  a  power 
which  has  entered  into  the  experience  of  the  world  as 
one  of  the  nobler  assets  of  the  Nation  and  of  humanity. 

But  higher  education  is,  it  seems,  not  a  broaden- 
ing pathway  of  negro  progress.  The  dread  that  our 
colored  people,  in  increasing  multitudes,  would  thus 
clutch  at  the  vanities  of  culture  in  order  to  leave 
behind  the  homelier  interests  of  useful  labor  has  not 
been  realized.  Let  us  note  the  facts.  Says  Com- 
missioner Harris  :  — 

"In  1880,  the  population  of  the  entire  country  had 
4362  persons  in  each  1,000,000  enrolled  in  schools  of 
secondary  and  higher  grade,  but  in  that  year,  1880, 
the  colored  people  had  only  1289  out  of  each 
1,000,000  enrolled  in  secondary  and  higher  educa- 
tion. This  means  that  the  general  average  of  the 
whole  country  showed  three  and  one-half  times  as 
many  pupils  in  schools  of  secondary  and  higher  edu- 
cation as  the  general  average  for  the  colored  people. 

"In  1890,  the  number  of  colored  persons  in  high 
schools  and  colleges  had  increased  slightly,  namely, 
from  1289  to  2061  in  each  1,000,000  of  the  colored 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  6i 

population,  and  in  the  year  1900  they  had  reached 
2517  in  each  1,000,000.  But  in  the  meantime  the 
general  average  for  the  United  States  had  increased 
from  4362  to  10,743  per  1,000,000.  While  the  num- 
ber in  colored  high  schools  and  colleges  had  increased 
somewhat  faster  than  the  population,  it  had  not  kept 
pace  with  the  general  average  of  the  whole  country, 
for  it  had  fallen  from  30  per  cent  to  24  per  cent  of 
the  average  quota. 

"Of  all  the  colored  pupils  only  i  in  100  was  en- 
gaged in  secondary  and  higher  work,  and  that  ratio 
has  continued  substantially  for  the  past  twenty  years. 
If  the  ratio  of  colored  population  in  secondary  and 
higher  education  is  to  be  equal  to  the  average  for  the 
whole  country,  it  must  be  increased  to  five  times  its 
present  average."^ 

If  the  figures  of  the  commissioner  could  take  into 
account  the  number  of  negroes  who  are  classed  as 
pursuing  the  courses  of  "  colleges  "  which  are  colleges 
only  in  name,  the  figures  would  show  a  still  larger 
percentage  of  negro  pupils  in  strictly  primary  work. 
The  statistics  indicate,  as  compared  with  the  white 
race,  no  relative  increase  in  the  number  who  are 
taking  a  so-called  higher  education,  and  the  record  of 
all  the  facts  would  indicate  that  truth  still  more  clearly 
than  the  figures  quoted. 

It  is  true  that  higher  education  possesses  its 
"perils."  All  education  possesses  its  perils.  They 
are  apparent  among  any  white  population  as  well  as 
among  any  negro  population.  There  is  always  pres- 
ent the  danger  of  superficiality,  the  danger  of  self- 

1  See  Report  of  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education  for  1899- 
1900,  Vol.  I,  pp.  Iviii  and  lix  of  the  Preface. 


62  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

glorification,  the  insistent  temptation  to  substitute 
sliow  for  reality  and  cleverness  for  work.  Education, 
on  its  most  elementary  side,  involves  risk.  Many  a 
life,  among  our  white  people,  has  been  educated  out 
of  contentment  without  being  educated  into  efficiency. 
Many  a  blind  heart  which  was  at  peace  in  its  blind- 
ness has  gained  only  enough  light  to  lose  its  peace 
without  the  gain  of  full  and  accurate  sight.  These 
are  but  the  familiar  risks  of  liberty.  Many  a  man 
would  have  been  prevented  from  being  a  murderer  if 
he  had  been  kept  always  in  a  prison.  But  society 
has  realized  that  while  the  lifelong  prison  might  have 
prevented  murder,  it  would  also  have  prevented  man- 
hood, and  that  it  is  well  to  give  men  freedom,  upon 
the  broad  and  familiar  ground  that  the  smaller  risk  of 
murder  is  of  slight  concern  as  compared  with  the 
larger  chance  of  gaining  manhood. 

Education  brings  its  dangers.  But  the  risk  of 
making  fools  is  of  smaller  import  than  the  larger 
chance  of  making  men.  Through  long  experience 
society  has  also  found  that  the  dangers  of  ignorance 
are  greater  than  the  dangers  of  knowledge.  In  the 
case  of  the  negro  it  is  evident  that  the  educational 
process  has  a  larger  record  of  failure  than  in  the 
case  of  the  Caucasian.  This  was  inevitable.  The 
kind  of  education  which  has  been  tried  by  the  negro 
in  the  mass  has  not  been  adapted  to  his  racial  need ; 
it  has  been  the  Caucasian's  kind.  But  as  the  Cauca- 
sian's kind  is  the  only  kind  which  the  Caucasian  has 
been  largely  active  in  gi\dng,  the  faults  of  misadapta- 
tion  can  hardly  be  charged  against  the  negro. 

Undoubtedly  our  negroes  in  the  mass  need,  chiefly, 
an  education  through   industrial   forms.     Of   this    I 


Ill  A   CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP  63 

shall  speak  hereafter.  It  is,  however,  in  the  interest 
of  the  race  as  well  as  in  the  interest  of  the  South 
that  the  exceptional  negro  should  be  given  a  broad 
and  generous  measure  of  exceptional  advantage. 

That  every  race  is  a  wiser,  safer,  and  better  social 
force  for  having  a  leadership  —  wise,  well-informed, 
and  true  —  is  axiomatic.  No  race  can  succeed,  as 
one  of  their  number  has  wisely  said,  "by  allowing 
another  race  to  do  all  its  thinking  for  it."  The 
South  has  insisted,  and  has  insisted  wisely,  on  main- 
taining the  absolute  distinctness  of  racial  life.  The 
wisdom  of  this  insistence,  the  deep  sociological  value 
of  what  has  been  called  "race  prejudice,"  —  despite 
its  sometimes  brutal  and  excuseless  manifestations  in 
every  section,  —  will  have,  I  believe,  an  ever  widening 
recognition.  But  if  human  society  is  to  establish  its 
distinctions  of  racial  life,  it  will  find  that  it  can  base 
these  distinctions  upon  intelligence  more  securely 
than  upon  ignorance.  Ignorance  will  be  blind  to 
them,  will  hate  them  and  attack  them.  Intelligence 
will  perceive  them,  and,  if  they  are  reasonably  and 
soundly  fixed,  will  understand  them  and  cooperate 
with  them.  The  "troublesome"  negro  at  the  South 
is  not  the  negro  of  real  intelhgence,  of  sound  and 
generous  training,  but  the  negro  possessing,  or  pos- 
sessed by,  the  distorted  fancies  of  an  untrained  will 
and  a  crude  wz/j^education. 

The  very  segregation  of  the  negro  race  seems  thus 
to  establish  the  necessity  for  the  real  training  of  their 
abler  minds, —  for  those  differentiations  of  negro 
ability  which  will  give  to  the  race  a  sane  and  in- 
structed leadership  from  within. 

The  development  of  this  leadership,  the  opportuni- 


64  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

ties  of  freer  and  larger  growth,  are  more  important  to 
the  race,  to  the  South,  and  to  the  interests  of  racial 
separation  than  can  easily  be  realized.  Racial  dis- 
tinctness is  chiefly  threatened  at  two  levels,  the  lowest 
and  the  highest ;  at  the  lowest,  where  vice  obliterates 
the  safeguards  of  domestic  purity;  at  the  highest, 
where  the  occasional  refusal  of  the  broadest  develop- 
ment sometimes  obliterates  the  safeguards  of  liberty. 
The  true  and  permanent  way  to  lead  the  negro  race  to 
keep  wisely  to  itself  is  to  make  it  sufficient  within 
itself.  The  race  which  is  to  be  forever  forced  to  go 
outside  of  itself  to  touch  the  broadest  and  richest  life 
of  its  generation  will  never  be  consciously  and  finally 
anchored  in  the  doctrine  of  race  integrity.  The  true 
basis  of  race  individuality  is  not  in  race  degradation 
nor  in  race  repression,  but  in  race  sufficiency. 

II.  In  discussing  the  questions  arising  from  the 
negro  common  school,  it  is  perhaps  too  often  assumed 
that  the  policy  of  general  education  has  been  really 
tested.  If  the  results  are  unsatisfactory,  is  it  not 
largely  due  to  the  inadequacy  of  the  experiment .'' 
Almost  half  of  our  colored  people  in  the  Southern 
States  —  after  forty  years  of  freedom  —  are  wholly 
illiterate.  Large  numbers  of  them  are  indeed  the 
despair  of  statesmanship.  But  they  are  not  worth- 
less because  they  have  gone  to  the  school.  Rather, 
they  are  worthless  because  they  left  it,  or  they  have 
left  it  because  they  were  worthless.  Shall  the  worth- 
lessness  of  these  negroes  condemn  the  school  ?  Shall 
we  condemn  the  education  of  the  negro,  shall  we 
condemn  the  education  of  any  people,  on  the  evi- 
dence presented  by  those  who,  through   poverty    or 


HI  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  65 

weakness  or  wilfulness,  have  touched  the  system  of 
education  only  to  desert  it  ? 

Nor  in  bringing  an  impeachment  against  negro 
education  are  we  merely  impeaching  the  negro ;  we 
should  also  be  impeaching  the  only  remedial,  cor- 
rective, and  constructive  policy  of  a  democracy.  If 
we  are  not  going  to  educate  them,  what  are  we  going 
to  do  with  them  ? 

At  least,  let  us  not  condemn  the  policy  of  negro 
education  until  we  have  established  it  and  until  the 
negro  has  tried  it.  One  who  will  carefully  and  accu- 
rately investigate  the  real  conditions  of  negro  life 
may  well  maintain  that  those  among  them  who  have 
really  tried  it,  who  really  know  something  and  who 
can  really  do  something,  are,  on  the  whole,  a  credit 
to  themselves,  to  the  South,  and  to  their  country. 
The  great  overwhelming  masses  of  them,  however, 
have  as  yet  come  about  as  near  to  illustrating  the 
results  of  education  as  though  education  were  the 
scourge,  rather  than  the  sceptre  of  broad,  efficient, 
and  resourceful  living. 

Great  numbers  of  them  can  read  a  little  and  write 
a  little.  But  is  that  education  ?  Who  will  presume 
to  test  the  high  pohcies  and  to  dispute  the  imperative 
validity  of  education  in  a  democracy,  because,  for- 
sooth, thousands  of  witless  and  idle  blacks,  after  a 
prolonged  and  convulsive  labor  of  aspiration  and  per- 
spiration, can  just  manage  to  put  some  kind  of  a 
vague  scrawl  upon  a  piece  of  soiled  paper  with  a  lead 
pencil  ^  Yet  these  people  are  supposed  to  show  the 
evil  result  of  negro  education.  Now,  it  would  be  hard 
to  say  just  what  that  much  education  proves,  except 
perhaps  that  there  would  be  less  folly  if  there  were 


66  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

more  knowledge.^  But  a  constructive  statesmanship 
may  well  protest  against  the  insistent  and  preposter- 
ous assumption  that  one  can  ever  judge  any  sort  of 
education,  negro,  Caucasian,  or  Malay,  by  seizing  a 
random  conclusion  from  the  general  mob  of  the  uned- 
ucated. There  is  no  test,  there  can  be  no  test,  of  the 
policy  of  the  school  except  in  the  number  and  quality 
of  those  who  have  at  least  seriously  attempted  the 
sacred  experiment  for  which  it  stands. 

We  may  well  continue  to  be  tolerant  of  the  policy 
of  negro  education  until  we  ourselves  have  applied  it, 
and  until  the  negro  has  practised  it. 

We  may  condemn  him  for  his  failure  to  practise  it. 
Yet  the  fault  is  not  wholly  his  nor  ours.  The  fault 
is  not  his  alone,  inasmuch  as  the  public  resources  of 
the  South  have  been  utterly  insufficient  for  the  double 
burden  placed  upon  them.  As  we  are  told  by  the 
United  States  Commissioner  of  Education,  it  is  es- 
timated that  the  South,  since  the  year  1870,  has 
expended  ^109,000,000  upon  the  education  of  our 
colored  people.^  And  yet  it  also  appears  that,  for 
these  thirty-odd  years,  the  annual  school  term  afforded 
to  the  negro  child   has  averaged  less  than  seventy 

1  The  general  social  and  economic  conditions  presented  by  large 
numbers  of  the  colored  population  render  it  obviously  impossible  to 
establish  any  close  relation  between  mere  literacy  and  crime  ;  yet  Mr. 
Clarence  A.  Poe,  of  Raleigh,  N.C.,  clearly  shows  that  even  under  the 
more  adverse  conditions  the  literate  negroes  are  the  least  criminal 
(^The  Atlantic  Alonthly,  February,  1904).  There  is  also  a  clear  dis- 
tinction to  be  made  between  literacy  and  "education."  The  greater 
criminality  of  the  negro  at  the  North  is  due,  not  to  his  partial  emancipa- 
tion from  illiteracy,  but  to  industrial  discrimination  and  to  the  unwhole- 
some conditions  of  city  life.     See  p.  186,  and  note  on  p.  173. 

2  Report  of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education,  1899-1900, 
Vol.  n,  p.  2501. 


Ill  A   CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP  67 

days.  Indeed,  the  school  term  for  our  white  children 
in  our  rural  districts  has  averaged  little  more.  If 
the  negro  child  has  had  upon  the  average  less  than 
three  months  in  which  he  could  go  to  school,  he  has 
thus  had  more  than  nine  months  of  every  year  in 
which  to  forget  what  he  learned.  It  is  hardly  wise 
to  condemn  the  policy  of  negro  education,  to  con- 
demn any  policy  of  religion  or  culture  or  statesman- 
ship, upon  the  basis  of  so  inadequate  a  trial. 

If  the  less  fortunate  results  cannot  be  wholly  charged 
against  the  negro,  neither  can  they  be  charged  against 
the  dominant  people  of  the  South.  Theirs  has  been 
a  task  of  baffling  difficulty  and  of  torturing  confusion. 
They  have  had  to  re-create  their  properties  before 
they  could  hope  to  create  those  institutions  which 
represent,  through  the  resources  of  taxation,  the  active 
participation  of  property  in  the  tasks  of  government 
and  of  education.  The  South  has  had  to  get  some- 
thing before  it  could  give  anything.  Yet  out  of  its 
poverty  it  has  given  much.  The  negro,  too,  has 
given  —  directly  or  indirectly.  As  has  already  been 
suggested,  the  rents  pay  the  taxes,  and  the  negro  helps 
to  pay  the  rents. 

The  negro  primary  school  is  the  result. 

Before  dealing  more  explicitly  with  its  merits  and 
its  defects,  let  me  dwell,  in  passing,  upon  the  argument 
of  those  —  a  decreasing  number  —  who  oppose  the 
negro  school,  not  because  it  has  done  too  little,  but 
because  it  has  done  too  much.  We  are  told  that  "  it 
has  spoiled  good  field  hands  by  teaching  books." 

The  charge  is  in  part  well  founded.  It  is  a  charge 
which  at  one  time  or  another  has  been  brought,  in 
every  nation  in  the  modern  world,  against  the  educa- 


68  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

tion  of  the  agricultural  laborer.  It  has  been  used  so 
long  against  the  training  of  white  men  that  one  need 
not  be  surprised  to  hear  it  made  against  the  training 
of  black  men. 

Those  who  are  inclined  to  attribute  the  animus  of 
this  objection  wholly  to  what  they  may  call  the  "race 
prejudice  of  the  South"  have  too  readily  forgotten 
the  arguments  which,  within  less  than  half  a  century, 
have  everywhere  opposed  the  education  of  the  indus- 
trial classes.  There  are  those  who  are  always  tempted 
to  believe  that  it  is  the  chief  business  of  the  poor  man 
to  remain  poor,  and  of  the  cheap  man  or  the  cheap 
woman  to  remain  cheap.  The  leisure  classes  —  and 
the  employing  classes — both  North  and  South  are  too 
often  opposed  to  any  broad  realization  of  an  industrial 
or  political  democracy,  and  the  basis  of  this  opposition 
is  a  class  feeling  as  well  as  an  economic  fear.  The 
wonder  is,  not  that  such  opposition  still  exists,  but  that 
it  now  exists  under  so  many  evident  modifications. 

As  a  mere  class  prejudice,  one  is  indeed  under  no 
constraint  to  argue  with  it.  There  are  those,  both  in 
England  and  in  America,  who  have  accepted  as  one 
of  the  finalities  of  thought  that  "shopkeepers,"  "trades- 
people," and  "working-people"  must  never  be  any- 
thing else.  There  are  those.  North  as  well  as  South, 
who  are  confirmed  in  the  opinion  that  the  negro  should 
remain  a  field  hand,  a  field  hand  only,  and  that  the 
nine  millions  of  the  negro  population  in  our  democracy 
are  forever  to  find  their  industrial  function  solely  in 
menial  service  or  unskilled  employments.  So  impos- 
sible a  contention  it  is  unnecessary  to  discuss. 

But  there  is  also  an  economic  objection  to  the  educa- 
tion of  the  agricultural  laborer  at  the  South.     It  is  true 


Ill  A   CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP  69 

that  certain  special  interests  feel  that  their  fortunes 
are  involved  in  the  preservation  of  a  labor  unin- 
structed  and  therefore  cheap.  These  interests  are  in- 
stinctively averse  to  "  the  spoiling  of  field  hands,"  and 
it  is  altogether  probable  that  where  too  many  establish- 
ments are  doing  business  upon  the  basis  of  the  lowest 
living  wage  some  of  them  will  have  to  suffer  through 
any  differentiation  in  the  mass  of  their  unskilled  labor. 
But  in  any  normal  diversification  of  interests  there 
will  always  be  enough  labor  of  the  cheaper  type. 
There  is  little  danger,  at  the  South  especially,  that 
there  will  soon  be  any  serious  dearth  of  labor  com- 
manding but  the  lowest  wage.  Is  not  this  precisely 
the  economic  difficulty  of  the  South  at  large  .''  A  few 
interests  may  see  a  peril  in  the  fact  that  a  few  of  the 
negroes  are  ceasing  to  be  field  hands ;  but  the  South 
as  a  whole  finds  a  greater  peril  in  the  fact  that  so  few 
of  them  are  fit  to  be  anything  else. 

For  the  broader  welfare  of  democracy,  involving 
not  merely  one  class  but  all  classes,  is  not  injured  by 
the  "spoiling  of  field  hands,"  if  in  that  process  the 
man  who  was  worth  but  fifty  cents  a  day  is  changed 
into  a  man  worth  a  dollar  and  fifty  cents.  The  pro- 
cess of  change  has  manifestly  helped  the  man  himself  : 
it  has  helped  the  employer,  unless  he  is  a  victim  still 
to  the  old  economic  fallacy  that  the  "  cheapest "  labor 
is  the  most  inexpensive.  He  will  also  find,  as  I  have 
suggested,  that  it  is  always  less  difficult  to  secure 
dozens  of  men  worth  a  low  wage  than  to  secure  one 
man  who  is  really  worth  a  higher  wage.  This  indi- 
cates that  society  wants,  because  society  values,  the 
higher  wage,  —  values  it  not  only  as  a  measure  of  the 
increased  efficiency  which  life  demands,  but   as   an 


70  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chai-. 

effective  part  in  the  forming  of  the  wage  standard 
of  every  man  who  works.  We  have  too  long  assumed 
that  the  negro  in  the  fields  at  fifty  cents  a  day  is  a 
non-competitor,  and  that  he  becomes  a  competitor 
only  when  he  comes  to  town,  or  when  he  attempts  to 
do  what  white  men  do.  Every  man  who  labors  is  a 
competitor  with  every  other  man  who  labors.  If 
a  considerable  class  in  any  civilization  are  on  a  fifty- 
cent  basis,  the  tendency  of  the  reward  of  all  employ- 
ments is  affected  in  the  direction  of  that  basis.  The 
annual  salary  of  the  cashier  of  the  largest  bank  in 
one  of  the  older  cities  of  the  South  has  been  but 
^2400;  near  him,  in  the  surrounding  territory,  are 
thousands  of  men  on  a  fifty-cent  basis.  The  man 
worth  only  the  low  wage  in  the  fields  holds  down  the 
wage  of  the  unskilled  laborer  in  the  town,  for  if  the 
town  laborer  reject  his  wage  the  laborer  from  the  fields 
may  be  summoned  to  take  his  place.  If  the  lower 
skilled  labor  of  the  town  reject  its  wage,  the  more 
efificient  of  the  unskilled  may  easily  be  substituted, 
and  thus  on  through  the  ascending  scale,  rank  press- 
ing upon  rank,  the  wage  of  each  advancing  or 
depressing  the  wage  of  all. 

The  remedy,  of  course,  lies  not  in  the  crude  device 
of  paying  the  fifty-cent  man  more  than  he  is  worth. 
It  lies  in  adding  to  his  wage  by  first  adding  to  his 
worth.  If  he  is  worth  more,  the  employer  can  afford 
to  pay  him  more.  His  increasing  efficiency  bears 
upward  against  the  level  of  the  labor  just  above  him, 
compelling,  not  merely  a  higher  wage,  but  a  higher 
qualification  for  that  wage ;  the  ascending  competi- 
tion of  efficiency  is  substituted  —  from  level  to  level 
—  for  the  depressing  attraction  of  inefficiency  at  the 


in  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  71 

base ;  and  society,  as  a  whole,  moves  with  a  freer 
sense  of  accomplishment  and  enters  into  a  broader 
measure  of  welfare. 

For  the  man  on  a  fifty-cent  basis  holds  down,  not 
only  the  individual  wage,  but  the  collective  profit  of 
the  community.  He  is  upon  a  basis  of  mere  exist- 
ence, affording  no  surplus  store  for  wants  beyond  the 
demands  of  animal  necessity.  He  has  no  margin  to 
spend.  He  is  not  a  purchaser  because  he  is  hardly 
a  producer.  Yet  commerce  is  carried  on,  banks  are 
conducted,  churches  are  extended,  schools  are  sup- 
ported, homes  are  maintained,  governments  are  ad- 
ministered, upon  the  margin  that  remains  between 
the  bare  limit  of  existence  and  the  outer  limit  of  the 
wage.  Where  great  masses  of  men  are  worth  no 
more  than  a  mere  existence  they  contribute  little 
more  than  a  mere  existence  to  society. 

How  shall  he  be  worth  more,  worth  more  to  the 
farmer,  worth  more  to  the  intimate  and  interwoven 
fortunes  of  all  labor  and  all  society,  —  worth  more 
not  only  to  himself  but  to  the  State,  —  worth  more 
that  he  may  contribute  more .-'  All  the  institutions 
of  civilization  are  first  to  unite  in  that  exacting  and 
supremely  difficult  process  by  which  he  is  to  be  trans- 
ferred from  the  ranks  of  the  incapable  to  the  number 
of  the  capable.  The  home,  the  Church,  the  press,  — 
the  play  and  challenge  of  the  forces  of  industry,  —  all 
are  to  have  their  part ;  but  evidently  one  of  the  insti- 
tutions upon  which  society  must  most  largely  depend 
for  the  conduct  of  this  complex  and  stupendous  task 
is  that  simple,  familiar,  but  much  neglected  institution, 
the  rural  common  school. 

In  the  course  of  this  change,  many  a  field  hand 


72  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap, 

will  be  "  spoiled,"  spoiled,  not  by  being  made  more 
useful,  but  by  being  made  less  useful.  This  fact  can- 
not be  forgotten  or  denied.  In  every  such  process 
of  transformation  there  is  a  fraction  of  failure.  A 
human  being  is  taken  out  of  one  economic  setting 
and  is  not  transferred  successfully  to  another.  It  is 
the  tragedy  of  all  education,  but  it  is  a  tragedy  of 
education  only  because  it  is  one  of  the  inevitable 
tragedies  of  all  experience.  Surgery  saves  life,  but 
surgery  has  sacrificed  lives  in  trying  to  save  them. 
The  Church  labors  divinely  for  belief,  but  the  Church 
has  sometimes  made  men  doubters  in  trying  to  make 
them  Christians.  Institutions  are  not  perfect;  men 
are  not  perfect.  Of  all  men,  —  when  we  especially 
consider  the  exacting  demand  with  which  the  negro 
in  his  weakness  is  confronted  in  a  modern  democ- 
racy,—  the  negro  may  be  expected  perhaps  to  fur- 
nish the  largest  percentage  of  failures,  of  failures  in 
that  process  by  which  society  transforms  the  masses 
of  the  inefficient  into  the  efficient.  This  would  be 
true  under  the  best  conditions.  It  is  all  the  more 
naturally  and  inevitably  true  when  we  consider  the 
limitations  of  the  chief  instrument  of  this  transfor- 
mation, the  negro  common  school. 

Let  me  dwell  first,  however,  upon  some  of  its 
contributions  to  this  process.  It  has  its  manifest 
weaknesses.  It  may  represent  strange,  grotesque 
misadaptations  of  theory  and  method.  I  often  sus- 
pect that  the  last  thing  it  does  is  really  to  educate  — 
educate,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  word's  usual  and 
familiar  sense.  But  there  is  one  thing  which  this 
school  does.  It  represents  the  first  contact,  the  first 
constraining,  upbuilding  contact,  of  the  life  of  civili- 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  73 

zation  with  the  life  of  the  uncivilized.  It  serves  in 
at  least  four  definite  ways  (aside  from  any  knowledge 
it  may  impart)  as  an  institution  of  moral  power  in 
the  life  of  every  child  within  its  walls. 

(i)  It  represents  the  discipline  of  pimcttiality . 
When  the  untutored  child  first  gets  into  his  mind 
the  notion  of  going  to  a  particular  place  and  of 
doing  a  particular  thing  at  a  particular  time,  he  has 
begun  to  get  into  line  with  conscious,  intelligent, 
efficient  human  life.  In  other  words,  he  has  got 
hold  of  one  of  the  rudimentary  assumptions  of 
civilization.  Is  it  not  of  importance  to  realize 
what  a  difference  lies  just  here  between  the  state 
of  the  savage  and  the  state  of  the  citizen  }  There 
is  a  moral  idea  and  a  moral  achievement  in  the 
notion  of  punctuality,  and  the  rural  primary  school 
stands  for  that. 

(2)  It  stands,  also,  for  the  discipline  of  order. 
The  child  finds  not  only  that  there  is  a  time  to  come 
and  a  time  to  go,  but  that  there  is  a  place  to  sit  and 
a  place  not  to  sit.  He  finds  that  there  is  a  place  for 
everything,  that  everything  has  its  place,  and  that 
even  standing  and  sitting,  as  well  as  the  whole  task 
of  behaving,  are  to  be  performed  under  the  control 
and  direction  of  another. 

(3)  The  primary  school  stands  also  for  the  disci- 
pline of  silence.  For  a  group  of  chattering  children 
—  negro  children,  any  children  —  there  is  a  moral 
value  in  the  disciphne  of  silence.  To  learn  how  to 
keep  still,  to  learn  the  lesson  of  self-containment  and 
self-command,  to  get  hold  of  the  power  of  that  per- 
sonal calm  which  is  half  modesty  and  half  courage, 
to  learn  a  little  of  the  meaning  of  quiet  and  some- 


74  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

thing  of  the  secret  of  listening,  —  this  is  an  element 
in  that  supremacy  of  will  which  is  the  faculty  and 
privilege  of  the  civilized. 

(4)  Finally,  the  primary  school  stands  for  the 
discipline  of  association.  It  represents  the  idea  of 
getting  together.  Getting  together  is  a  civilizing 
exercise.  Ten  people,  old  or  young,  cannot  get  to- 
gether in  a  common  room  for  a  common  purpose 
without  every  one's  yielding  something  for  the  sake 
of  others  —  some  whim,  some  impulse  of  restless- 
ness, some  specific  convenience,  or  some  personal 
comfort.  Human  society  is  a  moral  achievement. 
Associated  effort,  however  slight  the  sphere  of  its 
exercise,  represents  part  of  the  discipline  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  more  ignorant  the  company,  the  greater 
is  the  effort  represented,  and  the  more  significant  the 
lesson.  In  the  primary  school,  the  children  learn 
something  not  only  from  getting  together,  but  from 
one  another.  As  the  teacher,  however  lowly  in 
attainment,  is  usually  at  least  one  rank  above  the 
pupils,  the  personality  of  the  teacher  makes  the  con- 
tribution of  its  influence.  No  negro  school,  however 
humble,  fails  to  represent  something  of  this  discipline 
of  association. 

Now,  these  things  are  worth  while.  The  disci- 
pline of  punctuality,  the  discipline  of  order,  the 
discipline  of  silence,  the  discipline  of  concerted  ac- 
tion, —  these  are  elements  of  merit  in  the  influence 
of  our  primary  educational  system  which  in  the 
training  of  a  child-race  are  worth,  of  themselves  and 
irrespective  of  the  nature  and  amount  of  the  instruc- 
tion, all  the  cost  of  this  system  to  the  country  and 
to  the  South. 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  75 

When,  however,  we  touch  this  system  on  the  side 
of  its  more  positive  contribution  as  an  education,  its 
faults  are  conspicuous  and  formidable.  We  have 
been  giving  the  negro  an  educational  system  which 
is  but  ill  adapted  even  to  ourselves.  It  has  been  too 
academic,  too  much  unrelated  to  practical  life,  for  the 
children  of  the  Caucasian.  Yet  if  this  system  is  ill 
adapted  to  the  children  of  the  most  progressive  and 
the  most  efficient  of  the  races  of  mankind,  who  shall 
measure  the  folly  of  that  scholastic  traditionalism 
which  would  persist  in  applying  this  system  to  the 
children  of  the  negro,  —  and  which  would  then  charge 
the  partial  failure  of  the  application  upon  those  very 
tendencies  of  the  negro  which  a  true  educational 
statesmanship  might  have  foreseen,  and  which  a  wise 
educational  system  should  have  attempted  to  correct .'' 
If  the  weaknesses  of  the  negro  have  made  him  run 
to  the  bookish  and  the  decorative  in  knowledge,  we 
must  remember  that  the  schooling  we  have  provided 
for  him  has  at  least  been  bookish,  even  if  it  has  not 
been  decorative. 

The  South,  I  think,  will  face  this  question  and  will 
deal  with  it.  We  must  incorporate  into  our  public 
school  system  a  larger  recognition  of  the  practical 
and  industrial  elements  in  educational  training.  Ours 
is  an  agricultural  population.  The  school  must  be 
brought  more  closely  to  the  soil.  The  teaching  of 
history,  for  example,  is  all  very  well;  but  nobody  can 
really  know  anything  of  history  unless  he  has  been 
taught  to  see  things  grow  —  has  so  seen  things,  not 
only  with  the  outward  eye,  but  with  the  eyes  of  his 
intelligence  and  his  conscience.  The  actual  things 
of  the  present  are  more  important,  however,  than  the 


76  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

institutions  of  the  past.  Even  to  young  children  can 
be  shown  the  simpler  conditions  and  processes  of 
growth,  —  how  corn  is  put  into  the  ground;  how 
cotton  and  potatoes  should  be  planted;  how  to 
choose  the  soil  best  adapted  to  a  particular  plant, 
how  to  improve  that  soil,  how  to  care  for  the  plant 
while  it  grows,  how  to  get  the  most  value  out  of  it, 
how  to  use  the  elements  of  waste  for  the  fertilization 
of  other  crops ;  how,  through  the  alternation  of  crops, 
the  land  may  be  made  to  increase  the  annual  value 
of  its  product ;  —  these  things,  upon  their  elementary 
side,  are  absolutely  vital  to  the  worth  and  the  success 
of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  these  people  of  the 
negro  race,  and  yet  our  whole  educational  system  has 
practically  ignored  them.  The  system  which  the 
negro  has,  let  us  remember,  is  the  system  which  we 
ourselves  have  given  him. 

I  make  no  adverse  criticism  of  our  educational 
authorities.  The  South's  indebtedness  to  them  is 
beyond  expression.  They  are,  for  the  most  part,  in 
sympathy  with  such  suggestions.  The  question  can 
be  reached  at  last  only  through  the  wiser  training  of 
the  teachers ;  and,  with  the  teachers  actively  ranged 
upon  the  side  of  such  amendments  to  our  educational 
policy,  the  change  will  come.  Such  work  will  mean, 
not  only  an  education  in  agriculture,  but  an  education 
through  agriculture,  an  education,  through  natural 
symbols  and  practical  forms,  which  will  educate  as 
deeply,  as  broadly,  and  as  truly  as  any  other  system 
which  the  world  has  known.  Such  changes  will 
bring  far  greater  results  than  the  mere  improvement 
of  our  negroes.  They  will  give  us  an  agricultural 
class,  a  class  of  tenants  or  small  landowners,  trained 


Ill  A   CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP  77 

not  away  from  the  soil,  but  in  relation  to  the  soil  and 
in  intelligent  dependence  upon  its  resources.  Thus 
the  "  spoiling  of  the  field  hand  "  will  never  mean  a 
real  loss  to  the  lands  of  the  State,  but  an  added  force 
of  intelhgent  and  productive  industry. 

In  a  number  of  the  fertile  agricultural  counties  of 
the  South  there  has  been  for  twenty  years  a  slight 
but  gradual  decrease  in  the  per  capita  wealth  of  the 
county.  The  best  negroes  have  been  moving  away. 
Progress  for  the  negro  has  come  to  mean  emancipa- 
tion from  the  soil.  The  State  becomes  poorer  when 
the  lands  of  the  State  are  left  in  the  care  of  the  idle 
and  incapable.  This  error  can  be  corrected  only  by 
identifying  the  negro's  progress  with  his  labor,  by  in- 
creasing his  value  as  a  farmer  through  teaching  him 
to  farm  intelligently  and  successfully,  —  by  linking 
his  interest  and  his  hope  directly  to  the  land.  As  he 
prospers,  the  larger  owner  will  not  have  to  waive  his 
rents.  As  the  tenant  comes  up,  the  land  comes  up 
with  him.  The  successful  farmer  raises  the  value 
and  the  productive  power  of  the  soil  upon  which  he 
stands. 

We  can  get  the  wealth  out  of  the  soil  only  by  put- 
ting into  the  soil  the  intelHgence  and  the  skill  of  the 
man  who  works  it.  When  our  tenants  and  our  farm 
labor  can  mix  in  their  ideas  with  the  land,  and  can 
put  thinking  and  planning  into  their  ploughing,  sow- 
ing, and  harvesting,  the  whole  earth  begins  to  lift  up 
its  head  like  a  pasturage  of  wealth,  happiness,  and 
dignity.  We  must  sow  something  more  than  seed. 
We  must  put  ideas  into  the  ground  if  we  are  to  get 
more  money  out  of  it.  A  pound  of  ideas  and  another 
pound  of  hard  work  will  go  further  than  ten  pounds 


78  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

of  any  fertilizer  that  was  ever  made.  And  what  is 
the  fertilizer  but  the  practical  product  of  an  idea  .■* 

Let  me  repeat.  If  the  South  is  to  advance  the 
wealth  of  the  land,  we  must  advance  the  practical 
intelHgence  of  the  labor  which  works  it.  If  we  are 
to  advance  the  intelligent  usefulness  of  our  labor,  we 
must  go  straight  to  the  children.  If  we  are  to  reach 
the  children,  we  must  get  hold  of  them  through  the 
school. 

If  the  school  is  to  represent  saner  methods  and  a 
wiser  educational  system,  we  must  begin  with  the 
training  of  the  teacher.  The  teacher  who  teaches 
must  be  in  sympathy  with  the  soil,  with  honest  work, 
with  intelligent  and  fruitful  industry,  and  must  be  so 
in  love  with  the  practical  bearing  of  a  practical  edu- 
cation upon  the  concrete  life  of  his  people  that  the 
drift  and  direction  of  his  training  will  be  toward  thrift 
rather  than  toward  idleness.  Education,  under  such 
a  teacher,  will  represent,  as  has  been  said,  "not  a 
means  of  escaping  labor,  but  a  means  of  making  it 
more  effective."  This  is  where  we  touch  upon  the 
contribution  of  Hampton  and  Tuskegee. 

These  are  industrial  normal  schools,  schools  for 
the  finding  and  equipment  of  just  such  teachers. 
They  are,  primarily,  institutions  for  teacher-training. 
They  are  not,  primarily,  institutions  for  the  training 
of  domestic  servants.  Schools  for  instruction  in 
domestic  service  might  well  be  founded  by  their 
graduates  in  some  of  the  larger  cities  of  the  South. 
I  hope  that  that  may  be.  But  the  white  race  is  pro- 
viding few  teachers  for  our  population  of  nearly  eight 
millions  of  negroes.  The  teaching  of  their  countless 
children  —  through  the  policy  and  the  preference  of 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  79 

the  South  herself  —  is  left  to  negroes.  Hampton  and 
Tuskegee  are  trying  to  better  the  quality  and  to 
increase  the  technical  and  practical  value  of  these 
teachers.  If  these  two  schools  could  double  the  out- 
put of  their  work,  they  would  be  touching  but  the 
remoter  limits  of  this  stupendous  task.  Theirs  is  the 
work  of  the  education  of  these  teachers  through  prac- 
tical methods  and  industrial  forms,  in  order  that  they 
may  go  forth  to  this  backward  people  in  our  rural 
South,  and  there  may  train  the  children  in  the  intel- 
ligent use  of  the  soil,  of  concrete  objects,  and  of 
natural  forces,  so  that,  as  there  comes  about  the  ris- 
ing of  this  race,  the  whole  land  may  rise  with  it,  — 
the  true  progress  of  the  negro  thus  representing,  not 
the  fattening  of  the  industrial  parasite,  but  that  whole- 
some and  creative  growth  which  will  capitalize  the 
life  of  the  State  with  the  skilled  hands  and  the  pro- 
ductive capacity  of  its  masses. 

III.  Is  there  any  danger  in  the  coincident  industrial 
development  of  our  two  races  ?  There  are  those  who 
tell  us  so.  Many  of  the  same  men  who  assured  us, 
ten  years  ago,  that  industrial  education  is  the  only 
education  the  negro  should  have,  are  now  ready  with 
the  assurance  that  for  fear  the  industrial  development 
of  the  negro  will  clash  with  that  of  the  white  man, 
this  form  of  negro  training  is  the  most  dangerous 
contribution  that  has  thus  far  been  made  to  the  solu- 
tion of  our  Southern  problems.  The  poor  negro ! 
The  man  who  would  keep  him  in  ignorance  and  then 
would  disfranchise  him  because  he  is  ignorant  must 
seem  to  him  as  a  paragon  of  erect  and  radiant  con- 
sistency, when  compared  with  the  man  who  first  tells 


8o  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

him  he  must  work,  and  then  tells  him  he  must  not 
learn  how. 

He  tells  the  negro  he  must  make  shoes,  but  that 
he  must  not  make  shoes  which  people  can  wear ;  that 
he  may  be  a  wheelwright,  but  that  he  must  make 
neither  good  wheels  nor  salable  wagons ;  that  he 
must  be  a  farmer,  but  that  he  must  not  farm  well. 
According  to  this  fatuous  philosophy  of  our  situation, 
we  are  to  find  the  true  ground  of  interracial  harmony 
when  we  have  proved  to  the  negro  that  it  is  useless 
for  him  to  be  useful,  and  only  after  we  have  consist- 
ently sought  the  negro's  industrial  contentment  on 
the  basis  of  his  industrial  despair. 

The  South  had  no  trouble  with  her  slaves  before 
the  war ;  we  had  no  trouble  with  them  during  the 
war,  even  when  our  women  were  left  largely  at  their 
mercy.  We  had  no  trouble  with  them  after  the  war, 
till  the  carpet-bagger  from  the  North  came  down 
upon  them.  They  were  a  peaceful  and  helpful  peo- 
ple because  slavery  had  at  least  taught  them  how  to 
do  something  and  how  to  do  it  well.  The  industrial 
education  of  the  negro  is  intended  to  supply,  under 
the  conditions  of  freedom,  those  elements  of  skill, 
those  conditions  of  industrial  peace,  which  our  fathers 
supplied  under  the  conditions  of  slavery.  It  is  not 
without  significance  that  no  graduate  of  Hampton  or 
Tuskegee  has  ever  been  charged  with  assault  upon 
a  woman. 

We  must  not  forget,  however,  that  the  critic  of  our 
negroes  still  further  arraigns  them  because,  in  Ala- 
bama, for  example,  while  constituting  over  45  per 
cent  of  the  population,  they  pay  perhaps  less  than  5 
per  cent  of  the  direct  taxes ;  yet,  strangely  enough,  the 


Ill  A   CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP  8l 

same  man  declaims  in  the  next  breath  on  the  peril  of  the 
negro's  industrial  rivalry.  For  thirty  years  this  type  of 
the  arraignment  of  the  negro  has  paid  the  negro  the 
tribute  of  its  fear,  and  has  insulted  the  white  man  by 
its  assumption  of  his  industrial  impotence.  Certainly 
it  should  seem  conspicuously  evident  that  if  there  is 
one  thing  the  South  need  not  fear  at  present,  it  is 
any  general  or  too  rapid  increase  in  the  productive 
efficiency  of  the  masses  of  her  negroes.  Her  peril, 
as  has  already  been  suggested,  lies  in  precisely  the 
opposite  direction.  It  is  certainly  no  tribute  to  the 
Caucasian  to  assume  that  his  own  proud  and  historic 
race,  with  its  centuries  of  start  and  the  funded  culture 
of  all  civilization  at  its  command,  cannot  keep  ahead 
of  the  negro,  no  matter  what  the  negro  can  know  or 
do.  The  only  real  peril  of  our  situation  lies,  not  in 
any  aspect  of  the  negro's  wise  and  legitimate  prog- 
ress, but  rather  in  the  danger  that  the  negro  will 
know  so  Httle,  will  do  so  little,  and  will  increasingly 
care  so  little  about  either  knowing  or  doing,  that  the 
great  black  mass  of  his  numbers,  his  ignorance,  his 
idleness,  and  his  lethargy  will  drag  forever  like  a 
cancerous  and  suffocating  burden  at  the  heart  of  our 
Southern  Hfe.  And  yet,  were  the  industrial  develop- 
ment of  the  negro  tenfold  as  rapid  and  twentyfold  as 
general  in  its  scope,  should  we  then  be  compelled  to 
witness  the  predicted  annihilation  of  the  weaker  race 
at  the  hands  of  our  industrial  mob  .-*  I  think  not. 
The  native  qualities  of  the  negro  persist  as  his 
protective  genius.  Whenever  the  negro  has  looked 
down  the  lane  of  annihilation,  he  has  always  had  the 
good  sense  to  go  around  the  other  way.  "  The 
negro,"  says  Mr.  Dooley,  "has  many  fine  qualities; 


82  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

he  is  joyous,  light-hearted,  and  aisily  lynched."  But 
the  last  of  these  qualities  is  individual,  not  collective. 
He  avoids  its  expression  by  avoiding  the  occasion  for 
its  exercise.  If  Burke  was  right  in  saying  that  we 
cannot  indict  a  whole  people,  it  is  also  true  that  we 
cannot  lynch  a  whole  race,  especially  when  this  race 
has  a  preference  for  amnesty,  will  accept  in  the 
white  man's  country  the  place  assigned  him  by  the 
white  man,  will  do  his  work,  not  by  stress  of  rivalry, 
but  by  genial  cooperation  with  the  white  man's  inter- 
ests, will  take  the  job  allotted  him  in  that  division  of 
the  world's  work  which  is  made  by  the  white  man's 
powers,  and  will  do  that  work  so  well  that  the  white 
man  can  make  more  from  it  by  leaving  it  with  the 
negro  than  by  doing  it  himself.  Such  has  been  the 
working  principle  of  the  industrial  coordination  of 
these  races,  North  as  well  as  South.  It  is  a  principle 
which  I  have  here  stated  in  its  crudest  form.  It  is 
often  modified  by  especial  consideration  on  the  one 
side,  and  by  especial  efficiency  on  the  other.  But 
the  principle  itself  runs  back  into  the  nature  of  men 
and  the  nature  of  things. 

A  weaker  race  dwelling  in  the  land  of  a  stronger 
race  makes  no  war  upon  the  stronger,  creates  no 
critical  social  or  industrial  issues,  takes  the  place  as- 
signed it  in  the  political,  social,  and  industrial  economy 
of  the  land.  The  negro  will  prove  himself  so  useful, 
so  valuable  to  the  country,  to  humanity,  that  the 
world  will  want  him  to  live.  He  will  not  invite  ex- 
tinction through  industrial  exasperations,  through 
self-assertive  competitions.  He  gives  way.  He 
comes  back  upon  another  track.  He  fits  into  his 
own  niche.     The  increase  of  his  efficiency  increases 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE   STATESMANSHIP  83 

the  possible  points  of  his  adaptation  to  the  world's 
work.  The  world  holds  more  of  work  than  of  workers, 
and  the  more  varied  the  opportunities  for  work,  the 
more  chance  for  all  the  workers.  Industrial  conflicts 
are  found  in  their  acutest  form,  not  in  the  complex 
fields  which  only  the  few  can  occupy  and  where  the 
principle  of  the  division  of  labor  is  most  fully  recog- 
nized, but  in  the  elementary  tasks  which  almost  every 
man  can  perform,  and  in  which  all  the  unfitted  are 
fitted  for  competition. 

The  field  of  competition  is  narrowed  as  the  field 
for  differentiation  is  broadened.  As  we  touch  the 
tasks  of  skill,  we  touch  the  keys  of  industrial  har- 
mony. The  negro  comes  with  his  skill  to  our  indus- 
trial organization ;  the  world  gives  him  his  place. 
He  takes  it.  He  demands,  he  can  demand,  no  more 
than  the  world  gives  him.  Whatever  it  may  be,  it  is 
his  lot;  and  he  accepts  it.  This  is  not  cowardice. 
Our  negroes  have  fought  well  in  war.  It  is  some- 
thing deeper  than  cowardice.  It  is  something  deeper 
than  self-preservation.  It  is  a  profounder,  a  more 
constructive  impulse.  It  is  self-conservation.  It  is 
Ufe. 

And  we  need  not  dwell  too  much  upon  the  theories 
of  alarm.  There  is  nothing  more  weakly  theoretic  than 
a  theoretic  fear.  The  apprehensions  which  have  at- 
tended the  progress  of  the  negro  have  usually  come  to 
nothing  with  the  arrival  of  the  facts.  Just  as  it  was 
"conclusively  established,"  before  the  general  use  of 
the  locomotive,  that  passengers  going  faster  than 
twenty  miles  an  hour  would  certainly  perish  "  from 
lack  of  breath,"  so  it  w^as  confidently  argued  that  the 
negroes  when  emancipated  would  rise  and  slay  the 


84  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

women  and  children  of  their  absent  masters.  Some 
of  the  Nation's  wisest  men  thought  that  emancipation 
would  lead  to  slaughter.  Later,  it  was  contended 
that  the  immediate  and  universal  bestowal  of  the 
ballot  —  an  act  of  unpardonable  folly  —  would  lead 
to  interracial  war.  But  the  oft-predicted  "negro 
rising  "  has  never  come.  It  is  always  well  in  deal- 
ing with  the  negro,  or  with  any  factor  of  experience, 
to  determine  one's  policy,  not  from  the  possible  re- 
sults which  one  fears  it  may  produce,  but  from  the 
actual  results  which  one  may  see  it  does  produce. 

Here  are  the  negroes  of  our  representative  South- 
ern communities.  Does  the  South  have  serious 
difficulty  with  those  who  really  know  something  and 
who  can  really  do  something .-'  Which  class  of  ne- 
groes is  the  greater  menace  to  our  peace,  —  the 
negroes  who  have  the  scores  of  little  homes  through 
the  better  negro  districts  of  our  Southern  cities,  who 
are  increasing  their  earnings,  sending  their  children  to 
school,  buying  clothes,  furniture,  carpets,  groceries, 
chiefly  from  the  white  man's  stores  and  to  the  white 
man's  profit ;  or  those  negroes  whose  industry  is 
indeed  no  competitive  menace  to  the  most  sensitive, 
who,  if  they  are  without  ambitions,  are  equally  with- 
out excellences,  who  are  unskilled  enough  to  satisfy 
the  most  timorous,  who  work  three  days  that  they 
may  loaf  four,  who  may  be  responsible  for  several 
families,  but  who  are  without  a  sense  of  responsibil- 
ity for  even  one,  who  are  without  pride  except  the 
pride  of  the  indolent  and  the  insolent .-'  Which  class 
of  negroes  chiefly  figures  in  the  police  records  and 
makes  the  chief  burden  upon  our  courts.''  Which 
class  of  negroes  constitutes,  therefore,  the  real  peril 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  85 

of  our  situation,  the  efficient  or  the  inefficient  ? 
—  the  negro  who  is  making  real  progress,  or  the 
negro  who  is  making  none  ?  The  one  class  adds 
little  to  the  wealth  and  much  to  the  burdens  and 
perplexities  of  the  State ;  the  other  is  the  most 
adaptable  and  tractable  element  in  the  race,  and  it 
adds  by  everything  it  produces,  by  everything  it 
buys  or  sells,  to  the  volume  of  business  and  to  the 
wealth  of  the  community. 

We  are  sometimes  tempted  to  go  off  upon  a  false 
and  hopeless  quest.  We  at  times  imagine  that  the 
two  classes  of  negroes  between  which  the  South  may 
choose  are  the  old-time  darky  and  the  present-day 
negro.  But  practically  there  is  no  such  alternative 
for  us  to-day.  We  must  clearly  see,  many  of  us  with 
sorrow,  that  the  old-time  darky  is  forever  gone. 
He  was  the  product  of  the  conditions  of  slavery,  con- 
ditions which  no  man  at  the  South  could  or  would 
restore.  We  cannot  choose  between  the  old-time 
darky  and  the  new.  The  South,  in  the  exercise  of 
a  practical  responsibility,  must  necessarily  make  its 
choice  between  the  two  classes  of  the  new :  the 
class  of  quiet,  sensible,  industrious  men  and  women 
(as  yet  a  minority,  but  a  minority  steadily  increasing) 
who  seek  through  intelligence  and  skill  to  be  useful 
to  themselves  and  to  their  country ;  and  the  class, 
upon  the  other  hand,  which  is  backward,  thriftless, 
profitless  —  which  draws  from  the  land  or  the  com- 
munity only  what  it  may  consume  —  which  creates  no 
wealth  because  it  has  no  needs,  which  furnishes  the 
murderer,  the  rapist,  the  loafer,  the  incendiary  — 
which  presents  no  theoretic  competition  for  the  job 
of  our  skilled   laborer  largely  because  this  class  of 


86  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

negroes  is  not  much  possessed  of  any  skill  nor  much 
enamored  of  any  conceivable  job.  There  are  just 
two  classes  of  negroes  in  our  land  to-day,  those  who 
are  going  forward  and  those  who  are  going  back- 
ward. I  have  little  doubt  as  to  the  choice  which  the 
South  will  make. 

The  somewhat  morbid  fear  of  the  negro's  industrial 
education  would  never  have  arisen  but  for  the  preva- 
lence of  the  economic  error  that  the  volume  of  the 
world's  work  is  fixed  in  quantity,  and  that  if  the  negro 
does  a  part  of  it,  there  will  be  less  of  it  for  the  white 
man.  But  one  man's  work  does  not  reduce  the  vol- 
ume of  the  work  open  to  other  men.  Every  man's 
work  produces  work  for  all.  Every  laborer  who 
is  really  a  producer  represents  a  force  which  is  en- 
larging the  market  for  labor.  The  man  who  makes 
a  table  broadens  the  opportunities  of  industry  be- 
hind him  and  before  him.  He  helps  to  make  work 
for  the  man  who  fells  the  trees,  for  the  man  who 
hauls  the  trees  to  the  sawmill,  for  those  in  the  mills 
who  dress  the  timber  for  his  use,  for  those  who  dig  and 
shape  the  iron  which  goes  into  the  nails  he  drives ; 
he  makes  work  for  the  man  who  provides  the  glue, 
the  stains,  and  the  varnish,  for  the  man  who  owns  the 
table  at  the  shop,  for  the  drummer  who  tells  about  it, 
for  the  men  who  sell  food  and  apparel  to  those  who 
handle  it  and  who  profit  by  its  repeated  sales  from 
the  factory  to  the  wholesaler,  from  the  wholesaler  to 
the  retailer,  and  from  the  retailer  to  the  final  pur- 
chaser. The  man  who  makes  a  table  makes  business. 
The  man  who  makes  shoes  or  harness  or  tools  or 
wagons  makes  business.  The  work  of  the  trained 
producer  does  not  restrict  the  market  of  labor.     It 


in  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  87 

enlarges  that  market.  The  friction  sometimes  due  to 
the  negro's  possession  of  a  lower  standard  of  living 
passes  away  as  the  negro  advances  in  real  education 
and  genuine  skill.  As  he  begins  to  work  productively, 
he  begins  to  live  better.  He  is  not  like  the  myriad 
labor  of  the  Orient  which  never  accepts  American 
standards.  As  the  negro  goes  up,  his  standard  of 
living  goes  up.  There  will  never  be  any  question 
about  the  negro  being  a  consumer.  He  is  ever  a 
free  spender.  To  strengthen  him,  upon  wise  lines, 
as  an  American  producer  will  add  not  only  to  his 
capacity  to  work,  but  to  his  capacity  to  buy,  and  both 
what  he  produces  and  what  he  purchases  will  directly 
contribute  to  the  wealth  and  peace  of  the  community 
and  the  State. 

And  what,  let  us  ask,  is  the  alternative .?  If,  in 
dealing  with  these  people,  we  are  not  to  seek  the  re- 
sults of  stability  and  harmony  in  the  conditions  of  in- 
telligence and  industry,  where  and  how  may  we  seek 
them  ?  Is  there  a  sound  basis  for  stability  and  har- 
mony in  these  great  black  masses  of  ignorance  and 
idleness  that  we  find  about  us  .-'  Have  prosperity, 
peace,  happiness,  ever  been  successfully  and  perma- 
nently based  upon  indolence,  inefficiency,  and  hopeless- 
ness }  Since  time  began,  has  any  human  thing  that 
God  has  made  taken  damage  to  itself  or  brought 
damage  to  the  world  through  knowledge,  truth,  hope, 
and  honest  toil .-'  Industrial  activity  is  the  best  secur- 
ity for  industrial  harmony.  The  world  at  work  is  the 
world  at  peace. 

The  negro  has  his  weaknesses.  He  has  his  virtues. 
He  is  not  here  because  he  chose  this  land  of  ours. 
The  land  chose  him.     We   can    abandon   this  task, 


88  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

but  it  cannot  abandon  us.  It  is  the  grave  but  un- 
escapable  privilege  of  our  Southern  States  to  take  it 
and  to  work  out  through  it,  as  the  stewards  of  our 
country's  power  and  our  country's  will,  one  of  the 
greatest  national  obligations  of  American  life. 

What  trait  among  the  negro's  weaknesses  is  made 
better  by  idleness,  hopelessness,  and  industrial  help- 
lessness .''  What  trait  among  his  virtues  is  destroyed 
by  right  thinking,  by  real  knowledge,  by  the  capacity 
to  see  clearly  and  to  work  successfully  .-'  God  made 
him  a  man.  We  cannot  and  we  dare  not  make  him 
less.  But  we  may  not  be  self-deceived.  If  we  are 
to  make  him  all  he  may  become,  we  have  before  us  a 
task  of  immeasurable  and  appalling  difficulty,  a  task 
more  difficult  than  that  attempted  by  the  armies  of 
the  North  when  they  moved  against  the  South,  a  task 
more  difficult  than  that  of  those  heroic  armies  of  the 
South  which  withstood  the  North,  but  a  task  which 
the  higher  and  holier  purpose  of  the  North  and  of  the 
South,  in  response  to  the  challenge  of  our  children 
and  of  humanity,  will  yet  perform.  Its  difficulty  is 
not  a  reason  why  we  shall  fail.  It  is  the  reason  why 
we  shall  succeed.  The  sore  strain  and  trial  of  such  a 
task  will  touch,  not  merely  the  chords  of  our  compas- 
sion, but  the  metal  of  our  manhood,  and  the  thing 
will  be  done  —  done  wisely,  justly,  courageously, 
and  with  the  patience  of  a  great  country's  love  — 
just  because  it  was  so  hard  to  do. 


A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  89 


III 

I  have  dwelt  thus  long  upon  the  subject  of  negro 
education  partly  because  many  of  the  principles  in- 
volved are  to  a  degree  identical  with  the  principles 
involved  in  the  education  of  the  unprivileged  masses 
of  our  white  people,  partly  because  the  Southern 
policy  of  negro  education  invites  a  fuller  discussion 
than  any  policy  of  white  education  can  require. 

What  is  true,  however,  of  the  negro  masses  is 
largely  true  of  the  white  masses.  With  the  few 
necessary  qualifications,  everything  that  has  here  been 
said  in  behalf  of  a  more  practical  educational  system 
for  the  negro  school  may  be  said  in  behalf  of  similar 
changes  in  the  rural  schools  of  our  white  people. 
The  differences  in  racial  heritage  should  be  recog- 
nized. Certain  forms  of  industrial  training  may  be 
emphasized  the  more  clearly  with  the  masses  of  our 
negroes ;  certain  forms  of  scholastic  training  may  be 
emphasized  the  more  clearly  with  our  white  children. 
The  two  races  are  not  the  same,  and  they  will  not  re- 
spond in  the  same  way  to  precisely  similar  influences. 
The  average  negro  child  starts  much  farther  back 
than  the  average  white  child.  To  recognize  that  fact 
and  to  educate  as  though  we  recognized  it  is  not  cru- 
elty to  the  negro,  but  the  fairest  and  tenderest  kind- 
ness. Nor  does  this  mean  that  the  negro  is  always 
to  have  a  poorer  quality  of  education.  A  difference 
in  form,  in  the  interest  of  a  closer  adaptability  to 
need,  should  represent,  not  the  reduction,  but  the 
preservation  of  the  wisest  and  truest  educational 
standards. 


90  THE  PRESENT    SOUTH  chap. 

The  racial  heritage  of  the  white  man  must  be 
clearly  accepted  and  recognized  in  the  form  of  his 
educational  system ;  and  yet  a  white  population  so 
largely  dependent  on  its  agricultural  resources  and 
its  productive  industry  must  bring  its  public  educa- 
tion into  more  articulate  relations  with  the  soil  and 
with  its  work.  If  the  South  needs  to  secure  the 
sounder  industrial  progress  of  her  negroes,  she  must 
be  sure  that  the  industrial  progress  of  the  great  masses 
of  her  white  people  is  given  a  support  which  shall  be 
even  more  resourceful  in  its  enthusiasm  and  even 
more  aggressive  in  its  activities. 

The  relation  of  the  system  of  public  education  to 
the  needs  of  an  agricultural  people  is  a  subject 
which  has  engaged  the  consideration  of  the  great 
States  of  the  West  just  as  it  must  engage  the  atten- 
tion of  the  South.i  But  there  is  this  significant  and 
striking  difference.  The  West,  since  1870,  has  re- 
ceived an  efficient  foreign  white  population  of  more 
than  5,000,000  souls.  The  South  is  gaining  compar- 
atively little  from  white   immigration.     In  1900  the 

1  There  is  much  of  practical  value  in  the  Report  for  the  year  ending 
June  30,  1900,  of  the  State  Superintendent  of  Education  for  Wiscon- 
sin. Those  who  may  be  interested  in  the  general  methods  already 
adopted  in  Ireland,  France,  Sweden,  Denmark,  Belgium,  Switzerland, 
and  Germany  may  well  turn,  among  the  documents  of  the  same  State, 
to  the  Report  of  the  Commissioner  appointed  by  the  Legislature  of 
Wisconsin  in  1899  "to  investigate  and  report  upon  the  methods  of 
procedure  in  this  and  other  States  and  countries  in  giving  instruction 
in  manual  training  and  in  the  theory  and  art  of  agriculture  in  the  pub- 
lic schools."  Among  practical  elementary  manuals  on  the  subject  of 
agriculture  may  be  mentioned :  "  Principles  of  Agriculture,"  by  L.  H. 
Bailey;  "Agriculture  for  Beginners,"  by  Burket,  Stevens,  and  Hill  of 
Raleigh,  N.C.  (Ginn  &  Co.);  and  "  Rural  School  Agriculture,"  by  W. 
M.  Hays. 


in  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  91 

five  Southern  States  —  Alabama,  Georgia,  Missis- 
sippi, North  Carolina,  and  South  Carohna  —  had,  in 
a  total  population  of  over  8,800,000  souls,  only  \ 
44,996  of  the  foreign-born.  In  the  small  State  of 
Vermont,  with  a  total  population  of  only  343,641, 
there  were  44,747.  In  the  single  State  of  Kansas 
there  were  126,685  of  the  foreign-born;  in  the  one 
State  of  Nebraska  there  were  177,347;  in  the  State 
of  Ohio  there  were  458,734.^  ^ 

It  is  from  the  ranks  of  the  masses  of  our  own  peo- 
ple (if  we  are  to  have  a  sound  and  vigorous  economic 
development)  that  we  must  largely  secure,  not  only 
the  populations  of  the  market  and  the  professions, 
but  the  more  intelligent  populations  of  our  shops  and 
fields.  We  must  put  at  the  command  of  our  humbler 
white  people  —  perhaps  I  had  best  say  our  prouder 
white  people  —  an  educational  system  freed  from  the 
follies  of  inadequacy  upon  the  one  hand  and  of  mis- 
adaptation  upon  the  other.  The  stores  of  our  fields 
and  our  mines  will  be  of  small  avail  unless  the  skill 
and  equipment  which  shall  transmute  them  into 
wealth  are  exercised  within  the  borders  of  the  South, 
in  loyal  and  affectionate  attachment  to  her  interests 
and  her  happiness. 

Upon  the  necessity  and  the  policy  of  white  educa- 
tion, we  are  practically  agreed.  And  yet  the  possi- 
biHty  of  neglect  is  also  present  here.  It  is  not  that 
danger  of  neglect  which  comes  from  bitter  and  defi- 
nite aversion,  but  the  more  subtle  peril  of  vaguely 
assuming  that  a  work  upon  which  everybody  is 
agreed  is  somehow  going  to  be  performed  just 
because  we  are  agreed  upon  it.     There  is   in  mere 

1  See  also  Table  VII  of  the  Appendix,  p.  304,  columns  4  and  5. 


92  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

agreement  no  real  dynamic  of  social  progress. 
There  is  little  moral  power  in  the  universal  affirma- 
tion that  two  and  two  make  four.  Our  need  to-day 
in  behalf  of  the  unprivileged  masses  of  the  rural 
South  is  not  that  we  shall  agree  upon  education,  but 
that  we  shall  educate. 

The  task  before  the  South  is  one  of  conspicuous 
magnitude.  Striking  an  average  for  the  eleven 
States  of  the  secession,  we  have  found  that  of  the 
native  white  population  ten  years  old  and  over  12.2 
per  cent  cannot  read  and  write;  while  in  North 
Carolina  and  Louisiana  —  and  Alabama  is  not  far 
ahead,  —  one  white  person  in  every  six  is  recorded 
as  illiterate.  No  other  eleven  States  in  the  Union 
anywhere  nearly  approximate  this  condition.  In  all 
the  States  outside  of  the  South,  taken  together  as  a 
group,  the  average  rate  of  illiteracy  among  the  native 
white  population  is  only  2.8  per  cent  as  against  12.2 
per  cent  of  native  white  illiteracy  in  the  South. 
The  negroes  are  not  here  included.  These  figures 
deal  with  none  other  than  the  native  white  popula- 
tion. If  we  add  to  these  figures  the  number  of  our 
white  people  who  can  just  pass  the  test  of  literacy, 
who  perhaps  can  barely  sign  their  names,  but  who 
are  practically  illiterate,  our  conditions  are  seen  to 
be  still  more  serious. 

And  yet  the  hope  of  democracy  in  the  life  of  the 
South  to-day  lies  in  the  fact,  as  we  have  seen,  that 
among  increasing  multitudes  of  men  the  agreement 
to  educate  is  passing  into  conviction.  The  percen- 
tage of  white  illiteracy  is  large,  but  it  is  to-day  de- 
creasing. From  1880  to  1890,  according  to  the 
United  States  census,  the  percentage  of  illiteracy  in 


Ill  A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATESMANSHIP  93 

the  native  white  population  ten  years  of  age  and  over 
was  reduced  from  22.7  per  cent  to  15.9  per  cent. 
From  1890  to  1900  it  was  reduced  from  15.9  to  12.2 
per  cent.  The  reduction  of  this  percentage  within 
the  next  ten  years  will  be  even  more  striking.  The 
great  host  of  the  non-participants  is  entering  into 
its  own. 

A  political  statesmanship  is  recognizing  that  the 
desire  of  the  people  is  the  education  of  all  the  people, 
and  that  the  political  influence  of  the  South  is  to  be 
advanced  by  no  merely  negative  devices  of  resistance, 
but  by  the  South's  intelligent  and  positive  contribu- 
tion to  the  great  national  decisions  upon  economic 
and  party  issues.  Quality,  as  well  as  quantity,  must 
always  enter  into  the  subtle  influence  of  constituen- 
cies. An  educational  statesmanship  is  perceiving 
that,  as  the  people  come  to  know,  the  opportunity  of 
the  university  is  enlarged.  And  the  common  schools 
contribute  to  the  university  something  more  than  an 
increasing  practical  support.  The  university  in  the 
South  is  beginning  to  appreciate  the  vital  relation 
between  a  sympathetic  culture  and  common  need, 
realizing  as  never  before  that  the  ideals  of  the  higher 
learning  cannot  flourish  in  freedom  or  in  fruitfulness 
save  in  the  responsive  atmosphere  of  a  popular  faith 
in  ideas  and  a  popular  kinship  with  the  scholar's 
spirit.  A  religious  statesmanship  perceives  that  the 
mission  of  Christ  was  to  the  largeness  as  well  as  to 
the  rectitude  of  hfe,  that  breadth  and  sweetness  of 
temper  find  a  deeper  security  in  the  inheritance  of  the 
educated  man,  and  that  what  every  citizen  claims 
in  his  heart  for  his  own  children  he  must  desire  as 
instinctively  for  the  children  of  another.     The  states- 


94  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap,  hi 

manship  of  our  public  press  is  perceiving  that  in  the 
existence  of  a  generally  educated  public  opinion  there 
reside  some  of  the  secrets  of  editorial  independence, 
of  adequate  circulation,  of  broader  journalistic  power. 
An  industrial  statesmanship  is  declaring  that  the 
South's  largest  undeveloped  wealth  lies  in  its  unde- 
veloped populations. 

Public  education,  as  the  primary  policy  of  the 
South,  is  thus  presenting,  not  merely  an  opportunity 
and  a  duty  ;  it  presents  a  policy  of  investment  —  wise 
and  sacred  and  secure.  A  constructive  statesman- 
ship —  a  statesmanship  of  educational  and  religious 
insight,  of  political  sagacity,  of  economic  vahdity  — 
is  informing  and  renewing  the  life  of  the  land ;  and 
not  alone  in  the  heritage  of  the  past  or  in  the  wealth 
of  fields  and  forests  and  mines,  but  in  the  promise  of 
the  forgotten  child  of  the  people,  the  enlarging 
democracy  finds  its  charter. 


THE   INDUSTRIAL   REVIVAL   AND 
CHILD    LABOR 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE    INDUSTRIAL    REVIVAL    AND    CHILD    LABOR 


The  present  industrial  development  of  the  South 
is  not  a  new  creation.  It  is  chiefly  a  revival.  Be- 
cause the  labor  system  of  the  old  South  was  so  largely 
attended  by  the  economic  disadvantages  of  slavery, 
and  because  the  predominant  classes  of  the  white 
population  were  so  largely  affected  by  social  and 
political  interests,  it  has  often  been  assumed  that  the 
old  order  was  an  order  without  industrial  ambitions. 

The  assumption  is  not  well  founded.  Instead  of 
industrial  inaction,  we  find  from  the  beginnings  of 
Southern  history  an  industrial  movement,  character- 
istic and  sometimes  even  provincial  in  its  methods, 
but  presenting  a  consistent  and  creditable  develop- 
ment up  to  the  very  hour  of  the  Civil  War.  The 
issue  of  this  war  meant  no  mere  economic  reversal. 
It  meant  economic  catastrophe,  drastic,  desolate,  with- 
out respect  of  persons,  classes,  or  localities.  And  yet 
through  all  the  phases  of  catastrophe  there  still  re- 
mained the  essential  factors  of  the  old  prosperity  — 
the  land  and  its  peoples.  Thus  the  later  story  of  the 
industrial  South  is  but  a  story  of  reemergence. 

Without  some  conception  of  the  industrial  interests 
of  the  old  South,  the  story  of  the  later  South  is,  how- 
H  97 


98  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

ever,  not  easily  understood.  It  is,  for  example,  to 
Colonel  William  Byrd  of  Westover,  known  more 
recently  in  the  pages  of  fiction,  that  we  are  indebted 
for  some  of  the  interesting  particulars  as  to  the 
early  development  of  the  iron  properties  of  Virginia. 
Writing  in  1732,  he  tells  us,  among  others,  of  "Eng- 
land's iron  mines,  called  so  from  the  chief  manager 
of  them,  though  the  land  belongs  to  Mr.  Washington." 
These  mines  were  about  twelve  miles  from  Fred- 
ericksburg. A  furnace  was  not  far  away.  "  Mr. 
Washington,"  says  Colonel  Byrd,  "raises  the  ore  and 
carts  it  thither  for  twenty  shillings  the  ton  of  iron 
that  it  yields.  Besides  Mr.  Washington  and  Mr. 
England,  there  are  several  other  persons  concerned 
in  these  works.  Matters  are  very  well  managed  there, 
and  no  expense  is  spared  to  make  them  profitable." 
This  "  Mr.  Washington,"  thus  one  of  the  earliest 
factors  in  the  iron  industry  of  the  South,  was  the 
father  of  our  first  President.^ 

Before  1720  Governor  Spottswood  of  Virginia  had 
established  several  iron-making  enterprises,  and  the 
General  Assembly  of  Virginia  had  passed,  in  1727, 
"an  act  for  encouraging  adventurers  in  iron-works." 
Not  only  in   Virginia,   but   in    North    Carolina   and 

1  Quoted  in  "  Facts  About  the  South,"  by  R.  H.  Edmonds,  Balti- 
more, 1902,  from  Swank's  "  History  of  Iron  in  all  Ages."  To  Mr. 
Edmonds's  interesting  brochure  and  to  the  columns  of  the  Tradesman 
of  Chattanooga,  as  well  as  to  the  several  issues  of  the  United  States 
census,  I  am  indebted  for  many  of  the  statements  in  the  first  section 
of  this  chapter.  I  especially  wish  to  express  my  obligations  to  Mr. 
Edmonds.  It  should  be  said,  however,  that  the  figures  as  to  the 
assessed  value  of  Southern  property  in  iS6o  include  the  wealth  which 
existed  in  the  form  of  slaves.  This  should  be  borne  in  mind  in  noting 
the  contrasts  here  quoted  on  p.  loi.     See  also  the  footnote  to  p.  41. 


IV     THE   INDUSTRIAL   REVIVAL  AND   CHILD   LABOR     99 

South  Carolina  as  well,  there  continued  —  until  the 
close  of  the  century  —  much  interest  in  the  develop- 
ment of  this  phase  of  manufacturing,  and  the  colonial 
forces  made  frequent  requisitions  upon  its  product. 

In  1795,  however,  there  had  been  developed  an  in- 
vention which  began  to  transform  the  conditions  of 
Southern  life.  Eli  Whitney  —  a  native  of  Massachu- 
setts then  living  in  Georgia  —  gave  to  the  world  the 
cotton-gin.  With  its  introduction,  cotton  became  the 
dominant  interest  of  the  South.  Other  enterprises 
suffered  by  comparison,  as  men  came  to  realize  the 
increased  availability  given  by  Whitney  to  the  cotton 
product,  and  the  increased  value  thus  contributed  to 
the  cotton  lands.  From  2,000,000  pounds  in  1790,  the 
cotton  crop  rose  to  10,000,000  pounds  in  1796,  and 
to  40,000,000  pounds  in  1800.  Ten  years  later,  the 
crop  amounted  to  80,000,000  pounds,  and  by  1820  it 
had  reached  the  enormous  total  —  as  contrasted  with 
the  yield  of  1790  —  of  160,000,000  pounds. 

Nor  was  this  astonishing  increase  of  thirty  years 
coincident  with  "  four-cent  cotton."  For  nearly  forty 
years,  beginning  with  1800  and  closing  with  1839,  the 
average  price  per  pound  was  over  seventeen  cents  — 
forty-four  cents  per  pound  being  the  maximum  price 
attained,  and  thirteen  cents  the  minimum. 

During  this  period  it  was  inevitable  that  the  cotton 
interest  should  have  become  the  all-absorbing  occu- 
pation of  the  South.  Beginning,  however,  with  1840 
we  may  note  a  sharp  decline  in  prices  —  reaching  in 
1845  3.  point  slightly  lower  than  six  cents  —  and  while 
from  time  to  time  the  price  rallied  feverishly  for  brief 
and  uncertain  periods,  there  was  no  general  recovery. 
The  average  price  for  the  ten  years,  from  1840  to 


loo  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

1850,  was  the  lowest  average  maintained  throughout 
any  decade  in  the  history  of  the  American  trade. 

The  same  causes,  therefore,  which  had  drawn  the 
energy  of  the  South  in  so  conspicuous  a  degree  to 
cotton,  were  now  operating  partially  to  detach  the 
South  from  cotton  and  to  secure  the  direction  of 
Southern  effort  upon  other  enterprises.  Accordingly 
in  the  decade  from  1850  to  i860  —  the  ten  years  im- 
mediately preceding  the  Civil  War — we  find  a  marked 
and  rapid  development  in  the  South's  general  agri- 
cultural and  manufacturing  interests.  According  to 
the  United  States  census  of  i860,  —  as  Mr,  Edmonds 
has  pointed  out,  —  the  South,  with  one-third  of  the 
country's  population  and  less  than  one-fourth  of  the 
white  population,  had  raised  more  than  one-half  of 
the  total  agricultural  products  of  the  country.  The 
total  number  of  Southern  factories  in  i860  was  24,590, 
representing  an  aggregate  capital  of  $  1 75, 100,000.  In 
1850  the  South  had  but  2335  miles  of  railroad  as 
contrasted  with  a  combined  total  of  4798  miles  for 
New  England  and  the  Middle  States;  but  by  i860 
the  South  had  quadrupled  the  mileage  of  1850,  and, 
while  the  total  for  New  England  and  the  Middle 
States  now  reached  9510  miles,  the  South  had 
achieved  a  total  of  9897  miles.  In  1850  the  com- 
bined mileage  of  the  two  Northern  sections  had  ex- 
ceeded that  of  the  South  by  2463  miles.  In  i860 
these  conditions  were  reversed,  and  the  South  had  a 
margin  of  387  miles  to  her  credit.  The  railroad  de- 
velopment of  the  decade  at  the  South  represented  an 
expenditure,  largely  from  Southern  sources,  of  over 
^220,000,000. 

Then  came  war  and  the  more  bitter  years  that  fol- 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIXfAL  .IKD  CHILD  LA^Ok-     loi 

lowed  war.  In  i860  the  wealth  of  the  South  had 
exceeded  the  combined  wealth  of  the  New  England 
and  Middle  States  by  ^750,000,000,  but  in  1870  we 
find  the  conditions  reversed  and  the  wealth  of  these 
States  exceeding  the  wealth  of  the  South  by  ^10,- 
800,000,000. 

"  The  assessed  value  of  property  in  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania  in  1870  was  greater  than  in  the  whole 
South.  South  Carolina,  which,  in  i860,  had  been 
third  in  rank  in  wealth,  in  proportion  to  the  number 
of  her  inhabitants,  had  dropped  to  be  the  thirtieth ; 
Georgia  had  dropped  from  seventh  to  the  thirty- 
ninth  ;  Mississippi,  from  the  fourth  place  to  the 
thirty-fourth ;  Alabama,  from  the  eleventh  to  the 
forty-fourth;  Kentucky,  from  tenth  to  twenty -eighth." 

The  decrease  in  values  at  the  South  had  been  coin- 
cident with  an  increase  in  values  at  the  North.  In 
i860  the  value  of  assessed  property  in  South  Caro- 
lina exceeded  by  ;^68,ooo,ooo  the  combined  totals 
for  Rhode  Island  and  New  Jersey.  But  in  1870 
the  assessed  property  of  Rhode  Island  and  New 
Jersey  exceeded  by  more  than  1^685,000,000  the 
assessed  value  of  the  properties  of  South  Carolina. 

Beneath  these  cold  and  unresponsive  figures  there 
lie  what  tragedies  of  suffering,  what  deep-hidden 
recurrent  pulses  of  despair,  of  self-repression,  of  pa- 
tience, of  silent  and  solemn  will,  of  self-conquest,  of 
ultimate  emancipation ! 

About  the  year  1880  the  long-waited  change  be- 
gins. By  1890  the  industrial  revival  is  in  evident 
progress.  By  1900  the  South  has  entered  upon  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  periods  of  economic  develop- 
ment to  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  modern  indus- 


I02' '  VHE   ^'RESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

trial  world.  This  is  not  over-statement.  It  is  fair 
and  accurate  characterization. 

The  agricultural  progress  of  these  twenty  years  has 
been  more  than  creditable  as  compared  with  the  totals 
for  the  country  at  large.  But  the  most  distinctive  ele- 
ment in  the  economic  movement  of  this  period  is  the 
increasingly  dominant  position  of  manufactures  as 
contrasted  with  agriculture.  This  industrial  revival 
is  but  the  reemergence  of  the  tendency  which  we 
found  so  manifest  in  the  statistics  of  i860.  It  is  but 
one  reassertion  of  the  genius  of  the  old  South. 

In  1880  the  value  of  the  manufactured  products 
of  the  South  was  ^200,000,000  less  than  the  value 
of  her  agricultural  products.  But  in  1900  all  this  is 
changed.  The  value  of  Southern  manufactures  then 
exceeded  the  value  of  Southern  agricultural  products 
by  ^190,000,000,  and  "if  mining  interests  be  in- 
cluded, by  nearly  $300,000,000." 

In  1880  the  products  of  Southern  factories  had  not 
reached  a  valuation  of  $458,000,000.  By  1900,  such 
had  been  the  progress  of  twenty  years,  their  value 
had  reached  a  total  of  more  than  $1,463,000,000  — 
an  increase  of  $1,200,000,000,  or  more  than  220  per 
cent.  To  realize  the  deep  and  far-reaching  signifi- 
cance of  such  figures,  one  must  be  able  to  see  through 
them  — by  the  faculties  of  an  intelhgent  and  sympa- 
thetic insight  —  the  vast  industrial  and  social  changes 
which  they  represent.  They  mean  that  the  industrial 
centre  of  gravity  at  the  South  is  shifting,  however 
slowly,  from  the  field  to  the  factory ;  and  that  the 
factory  is  to  take  its  place  beside  the  church,  the  school- 
house,  the  home,  as  one  of  the  effectual  and  charac- 
teristic forces  of  civilization  in  our  Southern  States. 


iv      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      103 


II 

By  "  the  factory  "  the  average  Southern  community 
understands  the  cotton  factory.  To  the  eye,  in  the  new- 
industrial  scene,  it  is  the  most  conspicuous  represen- 
tative of  the  South's  industrial  transformation.  In 
the  twenty  years  from  1880  to  1900,  the  capital  in- 
vested in  cotton  manufacturing  at  the  South  increased 
from  nearly  $22,000,000  to  nearly  $113,000,000,  and 
the  number  of  establishments  had  increased  from  180 
to  412.  So  rapid,  however,  has  been  the  growth  of 
this  especial  interest  of  the  South,  that  since  the  tak- 
ing of  the  census  for  1900  the  number  of  cotton  mill 
establishments  has  reached,  in  January,  1904,  a  total 
of  over  900,  —  has  already  more  than  doubled. 

This  astonishing  development  has  been  due  to 
many  causes,  —  to  the  South's  possession  of  the  raw 
material,  and  thus  to  the  partial  truth  of  the  adage 
that  "  the  mills  must  come  to  the  cotton ; "  to  the 
South's  vast  store  of  available  and  inexpensive  fuels, 
her  ample  water-powers,  her  attractive  and  "  easy  " 
climate ;  but  chiefly  to  her  suppHes  of  tractable  and 
cheap  labor.  It  is  this  last  factor,  rather  than  the 
possession  of  the  raw  material,  which  has  contributed 
to  the  rapid  development  of  cotton  manufacture  in 
our  Southern  States. 

What  is  the  source  of  this  labor }  It  lies  in  the 
unlettered  masses  of  the  white  population.  The 
negro  population  forms  but  an  infinitesimal  fraction 
of  it.  Their  practical  omission  from  the  labor  of  the 
cotton  mills  is  attributed  to  a  number  of  causes,  —  to 
the  inadaptabiUty  of  the  negro  to  the  long  hours  and 


104  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

the  sustained  labor  of  the  factory  system ;  to  the 
desire  of  the  Southern  captains  of  industry  to  favor, 
upon  the  grounds  of  sentiment,  the  training  and  em- 
ployment of  white  labor ;  to  the  fact  that,  inasmuch 
as  it  is  often  difficult  to  employ  the  two  classes  of 
labor  together,  and  as  white  labor  —  by  reason  of 
its  teachableness,  endurance,  and  skill  —  is  the  more 
valuable  of  the  two,  the  preference  is  naturally  given 
to  the  stronger  race.  It  is  probable  that  all  these 
considerations,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  have  entered 
as  determining  factors  into  the  situation  as  we  find  it, 
although  it  is  to  the  last  that  I  should  be  inclined  to 
attribute  the  chief  measure  of  importance.  But  the 
situation,  whatever  the  explanations,  is  what  it  is. 
Men  may  not  agree  as  to  the  alleged  causes,  or  as  to 
their  respective  validity,  but  the  fact  remains,  that 
thus  far  the  characteristic  labor  of  the  cotton  factory 
has  been  almost  wholly  white. 

Upon  a  personal  investigation  of  a  large  number 
of  mills,  one  will  find,  among  managers,  superin- 
tendents, and  foremen,  the  representatives  of  almost 
every  social  class.  Although  the  mill  can  hardly  be 
called  the  instrument  of  an  industrial  democracy, 
there  will  sometimes  be  found  men  in  the  ranks  of 
factory  administration  who  have  worked  themselves 
forward  from  the  vague  multitude  of  the  unlettered 
and  unskilled.  It  is  from  this  multitude,  however,  — 
from  the  great  army  of  the  non-participants,  —  that 
the  population  of  the  factory  is  chiefly  drawn.  From 
their  little  homes  in  the  "  hill-country  "  of  the  Pied- 
mont, where  for  years  they  have  maintained  a  pre- 
carious existence  upon  a  difficult  and  forbidding  soil, 
thousands   of    them   have   been    drawn   within    the 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      105 

precincts  of  the  new  industrial  life.  Some  of  them 
have  come  from  the  heavier  lands  in  the  malarial 
sections  of  the  "  Black  Belt."  Whether  from  the 
hills  or  from  the  valleys,  —  and  most  of  them  are 
a  "hill-people,"  —  they  have  sometimes  found  in  the 
factory  an  instrument  of  industrial  rescue.  In  many 
instances,  however,  the  change  from  agriculture  — 
however  hard  the  old  life  —  has  represented  a  loss  of 
freedom  without  a  compensating  gain  of  ease.  I 
have  known  cases  where  the  bright  promises  of  the 
factory's  labor  agent  have  lured  families  from  their 
little  holdings  of  poor  land  to  a  fate  even  more  dreary 
and  more  pitiless.  In  other  cases  the  change  has 
represented  more  of  gain  than  of  loss.  The  family 
has  found  in  the  opportunity  presented  by  the  mill 
a  new  chance  for  a  real  foothold  in  the  struggle  for 
existence.  Having  failed  under  the  conditions  of 
agriculture,  it  has  found  under  the  conditions  of 
manufacture  at  least  the  possibility  of  another  world. 

On  the  farm  the  whole  family  has  usually  worked 
together,  and  so  the  family  still  remains,  under  the 
changed  conditions,  the  working  unit.  Often  at  the 
week's  end  they  will  find  themselves  in  possession 
of  more  real  money  than  they  have  seen  in  months 
before,  and,  not  clearly  perceiving  that  more  of 
money  does  not  always  mean  more  of  life,  —  an  error 
not  unusual  among  more  favored  classes,  —  and  feel- 
ing the  magic  spell  of  fellowship,  of  closer  social  con- 
tact with  other  human  souls  and  other  human  forces, 
they  soon  forget  whatever  of  advantage  the  old  life 
may  have  contained. 

Nor  is  the  promise  of  the  new  world  always  vain. 
With  some   the  possibihties  of   promotion  are  per- 


lo6  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

ceived,  and  steadily  and  sometimes  successfully  pur- 
sued. The  more  important  factories  are  now  seldom 
found  without  the  factory  school,  where  —  in  spite  of 
the  many  calls  to  the  mill,  to  meet  the  exigencies 
of  "rush  orders" — the  children,  or  a  fraction  of 
them,  are  given  an  elementary  training  in  "  the  three 
R's."  When  the  more  ambitious  boy  or  the  more 
capable  girl  is  advanced  to  "  piece-work,"  the  result 
of  an  active  day  is  often  a  gratifying  wage.  But  the 
period  of  satisfactory  earning  power  reaches  its  maxi- 
mum at  about  the  eighteenth  or  nineteenth  year,  and 
the  operative  is  held  by  the  rewards  of  the  industry 
at  the  only  time  when  another  career  might  seem 
possible  and  practicable.  When  it  is  clearly  per- 
ceived that  the  strain  of  the  long  factory  hours  does 
not  bring  a  really  satisfactory  adult  wage,  it  is  too 
late  to  change ;  and  the  few  who  pass  upward  in  the 
mill  are  but  a  small  proportion  of  the  mass.  These, 
under  the  pressure  of  the  economic  situation  just 
suggested,  yield  to  that  class  tendency  which  is  just 
as  active  among  the  poor  as  among  the  rich.  The 
forces  of  a  common  origin,  of  neighborhood  life,  of 
a  social  experience  shut  in  by  the  factory  enclosure, 
—  with  no  opportunity  for  the  home,  that  best  basis 
of  social  differentiation,  —  all  conspire  to  emphasize 
the  distinctions  and  the  barriers  of  caste,  and  we  find 
in  process  of  creation  a  "  factory  people."  They  are 
marked  by  certain  characteristic  excellences  and  by 
certain  characteristic  evils.  I  would  not  forget  the 
first  in  dwelling  here  upon  the  latter.  There  will  be 
found  among  them,  in  frequent  and  appalling  evi- 
dence, two  symbols  of  a  low  industrial  life,  —  the 
idle  father  and  the  working  child. 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      107 

Neither  could  exist  without  the  partial  complicity 
of  the  mills.  The  adult  men  among  the  new  recruits 
have  untrained  hands  and  awkward  fingers.  The 
younger  children  are  taken  at  first  as  the  "  pupils 
of  the  industry,"  but  the  mills  have  clung  to  them 
with  a  tenacity  which  indicates  that  while  their  im- 
mediate labor  may  be  profitless,  the  net  rewards  of 
their  "instruction"  do  not  fall  exclusively  to  the 
children.  Upon  the  Httle  farm  among  the  hills  the 
family  worked  and  lived  close  to  the  very  limit  of 
existence.  The  father,  there,  had  often  done  the 
hunting  and  the  fishing  while  the  women  and  the 
children  labored.  The  family  earnings  in  the  new 
environment  at  the  mill  present  a  small  but  appreci- 
able margin.  As  there  has  rarely  been  a  thought  or 
a  plan  beyond  a  little  fuller  measure  of  subsistence,  — 
subsistence  of  the  same  kind  and  according  to  the 
same  standards,  —  it  is  now  obviously  possible  when 
this  measure  is  attained  for  some  one  in  the  number 
of  the  workers  to  "fall  out."  The  father  does  not 
seem  to  be  seriously  in  demand,  the  j:hildren  are. 
The  member  of  the  family  who  ceases  work  is  thus 
not  the  youngest,  but  the  oldest.  If  the  father  has 
never  entered  the  mill,  —  as  is  sometimes  the  case,  — 
and  if  there  still  appears  a  little  margin  in  the  family 
wage  beyond  the  limit  of  subsistence,  the  one  who 
falls  out  is  the  mother.     The  children  work  on. 

Have  they  not  always  worked  upon  the  farm,  and 
upon  the  farm  have  not  their  fathers  and  forefathers 
worked  before  them  ?  Wrought  upon  at  first  more  by 
ignorance  and  apparent  need  than  by  avarice,  though 
avarice  follows  fast  —  the  father  and  mother  do  not 
easily  perceive  the  difference  for  the  child  between 


lo8  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

factory  labor  and  farm  labor.  It  is  true  that  the  work 
of  the  factory  —  especially  for  the  younger  children 
—  is  often  lighter  than  the  work  brought  to  the  child 
upon  the  farm.  But  the  benumbing  power  of  factory 
labor  lies  not  so  much  in  its  hardness  as  in  its  monot- 
ony. Picking  up  toothpicks  from  a  pile,  one  by  one, 
and  depositing  them  in  another,  may  be  light  work, 
but  when  continued  for  twelve  hours  a  day  it  is  a 
work  to  break  the  will  and  nerve  of  a  strong  man. 
The  work  of  the  factory  means  usually  the  doing  of 
the  same  small  task  over  and  over  again  —  moment 
in  and  moment  out,  hour  after  hour,  day  after  day. 
Its  reactive  effect  upon  the  mind  is  dulness,  apathy, 
a  mechanical  and  stolid  spirit,  without  vivacity  or 
hope.  The  labor  of  the  farm  is  often  hard,  but  it  is 
full  of  the  play  and  challenge  of  variety.  It  is  labor 
in  the  open  air.  It  is  labor,  not  under  the  deadening 
and  deafening  clatter  of  machinery,  but  under  the 
wide  spaces  of  the  sky,  where  sound  comes  up  to 
you  from  free  and  living  things,  from  things  that 
may  mean  companionship,  and  where  the  silence  — 
brooding  —  passes  and  repasses  as  a  power  of  peace 
and  healing.  Upon  the  farm  the  child  labors,  as  it 
labors  in  the  home,  under  the  eye  of  a  guardianship 
which  is  usually  that  of  the  parent,  which  is  full  of 
a  personal  solicitude  even  if  it  be  not  full  of  intelli- 
gent affection.  In  the  factory  the  child  works  as  an 
industrial  unit,  a  little  member  of  an  industrial  aggre- 
gate, under  an  oversight  which  must,  of  necessity,  be 
administrative  rather  than  personal.  Letting  your 
own  child  work  for  you  is  a  wholly  different  thing 
from  letting  another  man  work  your  child. 

And  the  evil  has  its  quantitative  side.     The  child 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      109 

is  not  alone.  The  child  is  a  part  of  that  vague  and 
pathetic  industrial  force  which  the  world  calls,  and 
ought  to  call,  "child  labor."  No  man  would  be  per- 
mitted to  operate  his  farm  with  that  labor  for  ten 
days.  A  distinguished  Southern  expert  has  testified 
that  60  per  cent  of  the  operatives  in  the  spinning 
departments  of  the  cotton  mills  throughout  the  Pied- 
mont district  were  under  sixteen  years  of  age.^  The 
United  States  census  for  1900  discloses  the  fact  that 
of  the  total  number  of  operatives  in  the  cotton  mills 
of  Alabama  nearly  30  per  cent  were  under  sixteen; 
and  that  in  the  Southern  States  as  a  whole  the  pro- 
portion of  the  cotton-mill  operatives  under  sixteen 
years  amounted  to  25.1  per  cent.  What  farmer, 
operating  a  large  farm  and  employing  large  numbers 
of  hands,  would  presume  to  conduct  his  farm  upon 
the  basis  presented  by  such  conditions .''  ^ 

Just  how  many  of  the  workers  of  the  mills  are 
under  fourteen  years  and  just  how  many  are  under 
twelve   it   is   difficult   to   say.      The    census   of   the 

1  See  Report  of  the  Testimony  in  the  Hearing  of  April  29,  1902, 
before  Subcommittee  No.  VII  of  the  Committee  on  the  Judiciary  of 
the  House  of  Representatives,  on  House  Joint  Resolution  No.  20,  p.  16. 

2  The  gross  number  of  cotton-mill  operatives  at  the  South  under 
the  age  of  sixteen  was,  in  1900,  24,459  out  of  a  total  of  97,559  opera- 
tives. See  Tvi^elfth  Census  of  the  U.S.,  Cotton  Manufactures,  Bulletin 
215.  By  the  month  of  August,  1902,  the  number  of  establishments 
had  doubled,  and  therefore,  if  the  same  proportion  was  maintained, 
the  number  under  sixteen  was  approximately  50,000.  Since  the  pas- 
sage of  the  child-labor  laws  of  1903,  there  has  probably  been  a  reduc- 
tion in  the  proportionate  number  of  child  operatives.  The  United 
States  census  places  the  line  of  the  division  between  the  child  opera- 
tive and  the  adult  operative  at  sixteen  years.  If  some  operatives  under 
sixteen  are  a  little  old  to  be  classed  as  "  children,"  it  is  hardly  less 
obvious  that  there  are  many  over  fifteen  who  are  a  little  young  to  be 
classed  as  "  adults." 


no  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

United  States  makes  no  distinction  in  the  ages  of 
those  who  are  under  sixteen.  Only  one  Southern 
State  —  North  Carolina  —  makes  any  provision  for 
the  collection  of  the  statistics  of  labor,  and  in  North 
Carolina  we  are  provided  with  the  data  for  only  those 
who  are  under  fourteen.  In  the  last  available  report 
for  this  State,^  i8  per  cent  of  its  textile  operatives 
were  under  this  age.  As  the  conditions  in  North 
Carolina  were  probably  not  worse  than  in  the  South 
at  large,  the  total  under  fourteen  in  the  whole  South 
was  approximately  30,000  at  the  beginning  of  the 
year  1903.  The  number  of  children  under  the  age 
of  twelve  in  Southern  factories  —  basing  the  estimate 
upon  definite  figures  from  certain  representative  locali- 
ties— was,  at  the  beinning  of  1903,  about  20,000.  The 
passage  of  the  North  Carolina  child-labor  law  —  in 
March,  1903  —  has  probably  resulted  in  a  marked 
reduction  in  the  number  of  the  younger  children  in 
that  State.  A  similar  reduction  has  probably  taken 
place  in  other  States,  for  in  the  year  1903  —  in  addi- 
tion to  Kentucky,  Louisiana,  and  Tennessee,  which 
had  already  acted  —  child-labor  laws  were  passed  for 
the  first  time,  not  only  in  North  Carolina,  but  also  in 
Alabama,  South  Carolina,  Virginia,  and  Texas.  There 
is  thus  but  one  manufacturing  State  in  the  South  which 
is  now  without  such  legislation. 

Even  here,  however,  the  legislature  of  Georgia 
has  passed  a  bill  visiting  heavy  penalties  upon  the 
able-bodied  parent  who  is  guilty  of  living  in  idle- 
ness while  his  younger  children  are  at  labor  for 
his  support.     The  demand  for  such  a  law  and   the 

1  See  p.  187  of  the  North  Carolina  Report  of  the  Department  of 
Labor  and  Printing,  1901. 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      iii 

passage  of  such  a  law  are  manifestly  a  confession 
that  a  child-labor  law  is  needed.  Even  the  less 
progressive  mills  naturally  rallied  with  righteous  unc- 
tion to  the  passage  of  any  legislation  which  would 
seem  to  shift  the  responsibility  for  present  conditions 
from  the  factories  to  the  parents.  Yet  it  is  evident  that, 
although  the  parents  have  been  part  offenders,  the 
factories  have  been  the  principals.  The  parents  have 
often  been  too  ignorant  to  be  responsive  to  higher 
industrial  standards.  The  factories,  however,  are 
controlled  and  administered  by  men  of  intelligence 
and  property.  Neither  ignorance  nor  poverty  can 
be  urged  as  an  excuse  for  the  persistent  activity  with 
which  so  many  of  their  representatives  have  thronged 
the  lobbies  of  Southern  legislatures  in  the  effort  to 
defeat  such  an  elementary  law  as  the  prohibiting  of 
factory  labor  for  children  under  twelve.  By  the 
advocates  of  protective  legislation  such  an  age  limit 
was  felt  to  be  inadequate.  But  in  view  of  the  vigor 
and  power  of  the  opposition  a  twelve-year  limit  was 
regarded  as  the  best  obtainable  result.  Indeed  it  is 
cause  for  congratulation  that  such  a  measure  of  suc- 
cess should  have  been  secured,  and  that  within  so 
short  a  period,  in  localities  in  which  the  problems 
presented  by  the  factory  were  of  such  recent  growth, 
eight  States  of  the  South  should  once  for  all  have 
abandoned  the  old  laissez-faire  conception  of  indus- 
trial evils,  and  should  have  accepted,  at  least  in  its 
negative  application,  the  principle  of  social  responsi- 
bility in  reference  to  the  industrial  status  of  the  child. ^ 

^  While  many  of  the  younger  children  are  being  excluded  from  the 
mills  by  legislation,  many  more  are  being  excluded  and  aided  through 
the  moral  pressure  created  by  the  agitation  for  protective  laws. 


112  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

In  Georgia,  legislation  has  been  delayed,  but  a  rapidly 
maturing  public  sentiment  will  soon  secure  the  needed 
law. 

Here,  as  in  the  States  which  have  already  acted, 
there  is  occasion,  however,  for  clear  and  insistent 
reply  to  the  pleas  by  which  some  of  the  representa- 
tives of  the  factories  are  still  attempting  to  lull  the 
social  conscience.  Even  where  legislation  has  taken 
place,  the  old  objections  still  arise,  partly  as  a  criti- 
cism of  existing  laws  and  partly  as  a  protest  against 
their  full  enforcement. 


Ill 

Still  we  hear  the  contention,  sometimes  upon  the 
lips  of  well-meaning  men,  that  legislation  restricting 
the  labor  of  the  child  is  "  paternalism,"  is  usurpation 
of  the  functions  of  the  parent.  But  the  right  of  the 
parent  is  not  the  only  truth  of  our  democratic  institu- 
tions ;  these  institutions  rest  also  upon  the  right  of 
the  child.  The  right  of  the  child  to  live  is  only  a 
part  of  its  right  to  be  a  child.  The  State  which  pre- 
vents a  parent  from  killing  a  child  by  poison  or  from 
maiming  a  child  by  a  blow,  may  also  prevent  a  parent 
from  killing  or  injuring  the  child  by  enforced  and 
unnatural  labor.  The  lighter  duties  of  the  home  and 
the  farm,  duties  which  are  half  play,  may  often  con- 
stitute no  injury  to  children  of  tender  years.  And 
yet  we  must  remember  that  among  the  most  dis- 
tinctive of  the  rights  of  the  little  child  is  the  divine 
right  to  do  nothing.  An  abnormal  tension  upon 
muscles  and  nerves,  in  the  period  of  immaturity,  is 
an  injury  to  all  life,  whether  animal  or  human.     To 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      113 

the  human  organism,  with  its  greater  delicacy,  the 
peril  is  of  course  the  greater.  Immunity  from  such 
a  burden  is,  for  the  young,  a  physical  and  natural 
right.  All  nature  and  all  society  are  organized  upon 
the  basis  of  the  recognition  of  this  right.  It  is  a 
right  which  is  much  more  important  to  the  home  and 
to  society  than  the  right  of  the  parent  to  shift  the 
burdens  of  the  breadwinner  to  the  shoulders  of  his 
defenceless  children.  The  State's  protection  of  such 
a  right  involves,  not  the  restriction,  but  the  enlarge- 
ment of  liberty.  It  means  the  extension  rather  than 
the  negation  of  freedom,  and  its  enforcement  is  not 
paternalism,  but  democracy. 

The  democratic  doctrine  of  the  freedom  of  contract 
is  a  good  doctrine.  But  no  wise  democrat  will  try  to 
make  this  doctrine  both  iniquitous  and  absurd  by 
giving  it  as  an  instrument  of  domestic  constraint, 
into  the  hands  of  ignorant  or  idle  or  unscrupulous 
parents.  As  was  declared  long  ago,  by  such  an  indi- 
vidualist as  John  Stuart  Mill,  "  the  doctrine  of  free- 
dom of  contract  in  relation  to  the  child  can  mean 
little  more  than  freedom  of  coercion." 

The  advocate  of  industrial  liberty  may  well  ask. 
How  many  of  our  younger  children  are  clamoring  for 
the  "right"  to  labor  in  the  mills.''  I  know  of  one 
little  girl  who,  tempted  by  a  few  pennies,  cried  to  go 
in.  The  next  week  she  cried  to  come  out.  But 
those  sturdy  foes  of  "  paternalism "  who  so  loudly 
asserted  her  right  to  go  in  had  nothing  to  say  about 
her  right  to  come  out.  The  real  befrienders  of  her 
liberty,  and  of  liberty  in  the  State,  may  well  be 
chiefly  concerned  as  to  her  right  to  come  out. 

There  is  no  essential  conflict  between  the  right  of 


114  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

the  parent  and  the  right  of  the  child,  for  the  guarding 
of  the  child's  liberty  will,  through  the  increase  of  its 
permanent  efficiency,  redound  to  the  distinct  advan- 
tage of  the  parent;  but  if  such  a  conflict  of  rights 
should  arise,  society  must  find  its  primary  interest  in 
the  assertion  of  the  right  of  the  child  to  its  child- 
hood—  for  the  child  constitutes  both  the  heritage  of 
the  past  and  the  promise  of  the  future. 

The  movement  of  a  population  from  industrial 
dependence  to  industrial  competence,  from  distress 
and  poverty  to  comfort  and  property,  is  not  a  process 
of  ease  for  any  of  its  elements.  Above  all,  the  indus- 
trial readjustment  of  a  population,  moving  from  the 
conditions  of  agriculture  to  the  conditions  of  manu- 
facture, must  bear  with  severity  upon  every  form  and 
aspect  of  the  family  life.  But  this  process,  however 
painful,  must  be  adjusted  with  the  maximum  of  com- 
passion to  the  lives  of  the  helpless  and  defenceless. 
The  chief  burden  of  this  readjustment  should  not  be 
laid  upon  the  child.  The  Hfe  of  the  child  should  be, 
not  the  point  of  the  severest  pressure  and  the  acutest 
suffering,  but  the  point  of  chief  protection.  And  yet 
I  have  knowledge,  and  every  close  observer  of  our 
factory  conditions  has  knowledge,  of  dozens  of  grown 
men  who  pass  their  days  and  nights  in  idleness  and 
dissipation,  while  they  live  upon  the  wages  of  their 
tender  children. 

This  is  partly  due  to  the  inhumanity  of  the  man. 
It  is  also  due,  however,  to  the  indirect  operation  of 
the  system  of  child  labor.  A  well-known  observer 
tells  us  that  "  a  pathetic  feature  of  the  movement 
which  is  turning  the  mountaineer  farmers  into  mill- 
hands  is  the  fact  that  no  regular  employment  is  fur- 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      115 

nished  to  the  men  by  the  mills.  The  women  and 
children  all  find  places  in  the  factories,  but  the  men 
are  left  with  nothing  to  do  but  to  care  for  the  little 
kitchen  garden  and  carry  the  lunch  pail  to  the  family 
at  the  mill  at  noontime.  The  mills  could  employ 
them,  but  they  seem  content  with  their  self-imposed 
tasks."  1  While  the  statement  that  "no  regular  em- 
ployment is  furnished  to  the  men  by  the  mills  "  is  not 
wholly  true  of  the  mills  in  many  of  the  sections  of 
the  South,  yet,  as  the  statistics  would  indicate,  the 
tendency  to  put  the  economic  burden  partly  upon  the 
defenceless  members  of  the  family  naturally  operates, 
among  the  ignorant,  as  a  temptation  to  the  father  to 
shift  that  burden  entirely  to  the  woman  and  the  chil- 
dren. 

This  tendency  represents  a  lowering  of  the  stand- 
ard of  parenthood  which  the  State  cannot  well  ignore. 
Aside  from  the  direct  benefits  of  legislation,  the  ex- 
pression of  the  interest  of  the  State  in  the  freedom 
and  the  welfare  of  the  child  must  react  upon  the 
sentiment  and  practice  of  the  family.  Just  as  the 
concern  of  the  State  for  the  welfare  of  the  child, 
expressed  in  the  provisions  for  public  education,  has 
actually  deepened  the  interest  in  private  education, 
so  the  pressure  of  a  higher  ideal  of  solicitude,  through 
a  considerate  measure  looking  to  the  relief  of  the  con- 
ditions of  child  labor,  must  react  upon  the  standard 
of  parenthood,  will  lend  a  new  and  sweeter  dignity  to 
childhood  in  the  homes  of  the  ignorant,  and  will  bring 
to  the  aid  of  the  conscience  of  the  father  the  whole- 
some forces  of  legal  exaction  and  of  social  expecta- 

1  See  an  address  by  Frank  Leake  (1900)  before  the  Manufacturers' 
Club  of  Philadelphia,  Pa.  (p.  14). 


Ii6  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

tion.  The  humblest  home  will  come  to  reflect  that 
ideal  of  the  value  and  promise  of  the  child  which  has 
become  articulate  in  the  judgment  of  society. 

We  may  still  expect  to  hear,  at  times,  the  reiterated 
claim  that  child  labor  is  "necessary"  to  the  family. 
It  involves,  however,  so  serious  a  confession  that  it  is 
now  expressed  with  much  less  confidence  than  of  old. 
There  will  be  fewer  and  fewer  mills  which  will  wish 
to  admit,  explicitly,  that  they  in  fact  pay  an  adult 
wage  so  low  as  to  force  the  economic  burden  of  the 
family  upon  the  frailest  and  the  youngest.  It  does 
not  sound  well,  and  it  is  not  true. 

A  well-known  expert  has  declared  that  he  has  had 
direct  knowledge  of  numbers  of  mills  "  making  prof- 
its of  35  to  40  per  cent,  and  some  close  to  100  per 
cent,  per  annum  on  the  capital  invested."^  Making 
every  allowance  for  any  possible  element  of  exaggera- 
tion, can  so  profitable  an  industry  for  one  moment 
present  the  plea  that  it  must  fix  its  adult  wage  at 
so  low  a  point  as  to  force  the  family,  in  the  mere 
struggle  for  existence,  to  throw  the  burdens  of  em- 
ployment upon  its  children  under  twelve }  Is  such 
an  enterprise  the  instrument  of  our  industrial  awaken- 

^  Address  by  Mr.  Frank  Leake  (1900)  before  the  Manufacturers' 
Club  of  Philadelphia,  p.  15.  The  year  to  which  Mr.  Leake  refers  was 
one  of  exceptional  prosperity,  and  later  years  would  not  show  so  large 
a  margin  of  profit, — but  the  rapid  and  continuous  development  of 
cotton  mills  at  the  South  is  ample  evidence  that  the  business  is  not  a 
"failing  venture,"  and  that  if  there  exists  among  the  operatives  an 
economic  necessity  for  the  labor  of  little  children,  the  responsibility  for 
that  need  rests  squarely  upon  the  mills.  The  profits  of  the  mills,  the 
profits  of  any  legitimate  industry  in  America,  easily  justify  an  adult 
wage  which  —  under  any  normal  conditions  —  will  relieve  the  younger 
children  of  the  family  from  the  burdens  of  sustained  and  confining 
labor. 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      117 

ing  ?  Our  factories  cannot  long  oppose  the  protec- 
tion of  our  children  upon  the  ground  that  the  chil- 
dren, and  that  the  very  standards  of  our  industrial 
life,  are  in  need  of  protection  from  the  factories. 

There  has  been  httle  plea  that  the  mills  have  been 
seriously  dependent  upon  the  younger  children. 
Certain  factories  have  looked  upon  their  employment 
as  an  advantage,  but  by  the  greater  number  of  ex- 
perienced operators  their  labor  has  been  regarded  as 
peculiarly  unreliable  and  expensive.  Yet  the  mills, 
as  a  whole,  have  clung  to  the  younger  children  as 
long  as  it  was  possible  to  do  so,  partly  for  the  purpose 
of  training  the  child  for  the  work,  and  partly  for 
the  purpose  of  "  holding  the  family."  Both  these 
arguments  seem  to  be  gradually  yielding,  however, 
to  the  argument  for  conservative  legislation.  It  is 
true  that  the  child's  fingers  gain  a  certain  added 
dexterity  from  early  work;  but  this  advantage  at 
one  end  is  more  than  offset  by  the  dulling  effect  of 
exacting  labor  upon  the  immature ;  by  the  increase, 
at  the  other  end,  of  premature  senility  and  the  con- 
sequent shortening,  not  only  of  productive  capacity, 
but  sometimes  of  life  itself.  Even  where  life  lasts 
on  —  and  there  are  observers  who  claim  that  child 
labor  has  no  effect  upon  the  mere  period  of  expec- 
tation —  the  victim  of  the  child-labor  system  is  early 
counted  among  the  relatively  incapable. 

I  say  the  "relatively  incapable,"  because,  while  he 
may  continue  to  do  the  labor  of  the  child,  he  usually 
fails  to  advance  very  far  into  the  activities  of  the 
man.  There  are  exceptions  to  this  rule.  But  the 
canons  of  social  security  cannot  be  based  upon  ex- 
ceptions.    The  abnormal  strain  of   premature  labor 


Ii8  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

induces  premature  development,  and,  as  a  rule,  pre- 
mature development  results  in  arrested  development. 
To  the  industry  itself,  dependent  in  all  its  higher 
and  more  profitable  forms  upon  the  skill  and  effi- 
ciency of  its  operative  class,  there  is  neither  wisdom 
nor  security  in  a  policy  which  contributes  to  such 
conditions. 

Nor  will  it  serve,  as  an  objection  to  a  child-labor 
law,  to  maintain  that  the  mill  must  grant  employ- 
ment to  the  younger  children  in  order  to  hold  the 
family.  Incredible  as  it  may  seem,  the  demand  for 
the  using  of  the  children  has  come  in  many  instances 
from  the  mills  rather  than  from  the  parents.  But 
there  have  also  been  cases  in  which  the  "  good  mill " 
has  been  placed  under  pressure  from  the  parents, 
the  parents  threatening  to  go  to  other  mills  unless 
their  younger  children  were  admitted  to  labor.  Such 
an  instance,  however,  instead  of  proving  an  objection 
to  a  law  excluding  the  younger  children  from  em- 
ployment, is  in  itself  an  argument  for  the  enactment 
of  the  law.  The  passage  of  the  law  has  a  tendency 
to  put  every  mill  under  the  same  economic  standard, 
makes  futile  and  impossible  the  threat  of  the  parents 
to  go  to  other  mills  (inasmuch  as  the  "other  mills" 
would  also  be  subject  to  the  law),  and  upholds  the 
juster  regulations  and  the  more  wholesome  condi- 
tions of  the  progressive  factory. 

One  of  the  most  serious  phases  of  the  Southern 
factory  system,  especially  as  that  system  touches  the 
life  and  fate  of  the  child,  lies  in  the  habit  of  "  long 
hours."  I  have  known  mills  in  which  for  ten  and 
twelve  days  at  a  time  the  factory  hands  —  children 
and  all  —  were   called   to  work  before   sunrise   and 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      119 

were  dismissed  from  work  only  after  sunset,  labor- 
ing from  dark  to  dark.  I  have  repeatedly  seen 
them  at  labor  for  twelve,  thirteen,  and  even  fourteen 
hours  per  day.  In  the  period  of  the  holidays  or  at 
other  "  rush  times  "  I  have  seen  children  of  eight  and 
nine  years  of  age  leaving  the  factory  as  late  as  9.30 
o'clock  at  night,  and  finding  their  way  with  their  own 
little  lanterns,  through  the  unlighted  streets  of  the 
mill  village,  to  their  squahd  homes.  It  was  for  the 
correction  of  the  evil  of  night  work  quite  as  much 
as  for  the  establishment  of  an  age  limit  that  Southern 
sentiment  has  recently  been  aroused. 

In  Alabama  the  campaign  for  a  child-labor  law 
was  organized  under  the  leadership  of  a  voluntary 
State  committee,  including  within  its  personnel  rep- 
resentatives of  the  Church,  the  press,  the  judiciary, 
the  labor  unions,  and  the  mercantile  and  banking 
interests  of  the  State.  The  effort  for  the  passage 
of  a  child-labor  law  was  defeated  before  the  legisla- 
ture of  1900,  largely  through  the  skilful  and  aggres- 
sive opposition  of  the  representative  of  one  of  the 
New  England  factories  in  Alabama.^  The  defeat  of 
the  bill  served,  however,  only  to  increase  the  activity 
of  its  advocates.^     The  organization  of  the  committee 

1  A  correspondence  in  reference  to  the  partial  responsibility  of  New 
England  for  the  opposition  to  child-labor  laws  at  the  South  will  be 
found  in  the  Appendix  (B)  to  this  volume,  p.  309. 

2  Explicit  acknowledgment  should  be  made  of  the  work  performed 
at  this  time  by  the  special  agent  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor, 
Irene  Ashby  Macfadyen.  Mrs.  Macfadyen  (then  Miss  Ashby)  was 
subjected — as  an  outsider  and  as  a  "labor  representative"  — to  some 
criticism,  but  her  single-hearted  devotion  to  her  cause  was  supreme ; 
and  while  she  left  the  State  in  1901,  her  able  and  conscientious  work 
contributed  in  no  small  degree  to  the  ultimate  success  of  the  bill. 


I20  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

was  Strengthened  and  enlarged.  An  aggressive  effort 
was  made  to  create  a  literature  of  the  subject,  a 
literature  which  might  be  available  not  only  in  Ala- 
bama but  throughout  the  South,  a  number  of  pam- 
phlets were  prepared  upon  the  several  phases  of  the 
argument,  and  nearly  thirty  thousand  copies  were 
freely  circulated.  The  press  of  the  South,  almost 
without  exception,  responded  to  the  emergency.  The 
women's  clubs,  the  Christian  clergy,  the  labor  unions, 
and  the  representatives  of  a  few  of  the  mills,  united 
with  earnest  men  and  women  of  almost  every  class 
in  the  demand  for  a  conservative  measure  of  legisla- 
tion. When  the  legislature  of  1903  assembled  at 
Montgomery,  the  manufacturers  met  at  the  capital, 
appointed  a  committee  to  represent  them,  and  agreed, 
through  their  committee,  to  enter  into  a  discussion 
of  terms.  The  method  of  personal  conference  was 
at  once  accepted  in  the  hope  that  a  bill  might  be 
decided  upon  which  would  command  —  before  the 
legislature  —  the  support  of  all  the  parties  in  interest. 
A  bill  was  agreed  upon,  signed  by  the  representatives 
of  both  sides,  and  passed  by  the  General  Assembly. 
It  did  not  satisfy  either  of  the  contestants,  but  the 
advocates  of  legislation  accepted  it  as  the  best  meas- 
ure then  obtainable.  It  prohibits  child  labor  in  fac- 
tories —  save  under  a  few  exceptional  conditions  — 
to  children  under  twelve,  prohibits  any  night  work 
for  those  under  thirteen,  limits  the  night  work  of 
those  under  sixteen  to  forty-eight  hours  per  week, 
provides  for  the  registration  of  the  names  and  ages 
of  all  minors  in  employment,  and  affixes  penalties 
upon  the  parents  for  false  registration  of  ages,  and 
upon  employers  for  violations  of  the  law.     It  is  to 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      121 

be  noted  that  it  totally  prohibits  night  work  only  for 
those  under  thirteen  and  that  the  law  provides  no 
special  system  of  inspection.  Upon  these  phases 
of  the  bill  the  Chairman  of  the  Child-labor  Com- 
mittee expressed  himself  as  follows :  — 

"  The  Alabama  bill  was  a  compromise.  For  ex- 
ample, the  original  measure  totally  prohibited  night 
work  for  all  the  children  under  sixteen  years  of  age. 
The  representatives  of  the  manufacturers,  in  the  con- 
ference between  the  committee  of  the  manufacturers 
and  the  representatives  of  the  Child-labor  Committee, 
refused  to  accept  this  provision,  and  even  declined  to 
allow  the  prohibition  of  night  work  for  children  as 
young  as  fourteen.  They  insisted  that  the  limit 
should  be  put  down  to  thirteen  years.  I  think  that 
the  insistence  of  the  manufacturers  upon  this  point 
clearly  indicates  that  there  is  a  fallacy  somewhere  in 
the  claim  that  our  manufacturers  have  been  exclu- 
sively the  representatives  of  the  tenderest  philan- 
thropy. 

"  Many  of  our  factories  are  opposed  to  night  work. 
Many  of  the  strongest  men  among  the  manufac- 
turers have  never  worked  a  little  child  after  six  or 
seven  o'clock  at  night.  One  must  confess,  however, 
to  a  certain  amount  of  disappointment  that  the 
strongest  and  best  men  should  so  far  yield  to  the 
influence  of  the  men  representing  lower  standards 
that  a  committee  representing  the  manufacturing 
interests  of  the  whole  State  should  demand  as  an 
inexorable  condition  of  legislation  that  the  proposed 
law  should  permit  the  continuation  of  night  work  for 
children  of  thirteen,  fourteen,  and  fifteen  years. 

"  As  to  the  plans  for  the  future,  and  as  to  whether 


122  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

or  not  we  will  ask  for  a  system  of  state  inspection, 
these  things  depend  upon  the  course  of  the  mill  men. 
A  committee  of  gentlemen,  formally  appointed  to 
represent  the  factories,  have  agreed  in  writing  to  the 
terms  of  the  law.  I  shall  not  assume  that  they  are 
going  to  go  back  on  the  word  which  they  have  thus 
solemnly  given,  given  not  to  me  especially  or  to 
our  committee,  but  to  the  whole  people  of  the  State. 
I  shall  assume  that  the  law  will  be  obeyed  until  I 
learn  that  it  is  violated."  ^ 

In  Tennessee,  Kentucky,  and  North  Carolina  there 
are  partial  —  though  inadequate  —  provisions  for  in- 
spection. As  the  evidences  of  non-compliance  arise 
and  are  accumulated,  the  system  of  State  inspection 
will  be  introduced  throughout  the  South  where  it 
does  not  exist,  and  will  be  strengthened  where  it 
does  exist,  —  for  the  people  of  the  Southern  States, 
whatever  their  limitations,  are  not  given  over  to  indif- 
ference or  to  commercialism.  The  very  name  of 
"  reform,"  under  the  exploitations  of  the  reconstruc- 
tion period,  was  made  odious  to  them.  They  have 
not  been  familiar  with  the  social  problems  presented 
by  manufacturing  enterprises,  and  they  have  been 
without  legislative  precedents  for  the  correction  of 
industrial  wrongs ;  but  the  South  has  been  aroused 
upon  this  issue,  and  the  people  of  the  Southern  States 
—  if  they  are  in  earnest  about  anything  —  are  to-day 
in  earnest  about  the  liberties  and  the  opportunities  of 
the  child. 

The  South  cannot  and  will  not  provide  millions  of 
revenue  at  one  end  of  her  social  system  in  order  to 
give  her  children  schools,  and  permit  any  industry, 

^  See  the  issue  of  Charities,  New  York,  May  2,  1903,  pp.  454,455. 


IV      THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      123 

however  important,  to  stand  at  the  other  end  of  that 
system  and  shut  up  her  children  in  the  factory. 
Those  who  have  contended  for  industrial  reforms 
have  conceived  these  reforms  as  an  integral  element 
of  educational  progress,  and  they  have  conceived 
both  these  aspects  of  advancement,  the  movement 
for  industrial  liberty  and  the  movement  for  the 
"schools  of  the  people,"  as  but  two  phases  of  the 
one  underlying,  essential  direction  of  Southern  life, 
the  movement  toward  a  truly  democratic  order. 

The  system  of  child  labor,  especially  at  the  South, 
is  at  war,  not  only  with  the  welfare  of  the  child, 
the  parent,  the  industry,  but  with  democracy  itself. 
It  stands,  not  only  for  arrested  development  in  the 
individual,  for  ignorance  and  industrial  helplessness, 
but  for  arrested  development  in  the  social  class  to 
which  the  child  belongs.  These  have  been  the  white 
non-participants  of  the  older  civilization.  The  greater 
number  of  them,  as  indicated  in  the  opening  chapter 
of  this  volume,  are  now  being  incorporated  within 
the  general  body  of  democratic  life.  They  are  be- 
coming conscious  participants  in  the  fulness  and  free- 
dom of  their  century.  Those  who  have  become 
involved  in  the  industrial  movement  represented 
by  the  mill  might  well  find  through  the  mill,  —  as  a 
few  have  done,  —  not  only  more  to  eat  and  more  to 
wear,  but  more  to  live  for.  The  mill  might  well  be 
to  all,  as  it  has  been  to  some,  the  instrument  of  their 
transplanting,  —  out  of  a  life  of  barren  and  isolated 
non-participation  into  a  life  of  fruitful  and  generous 
relationship  with  men,  with  work,  with  the  rewarding 
world.  But  it  has  too  often  seemed  to  be  the  policy  of 
the  factory  to  save  only  in  order  that  it  might  consume. 


124  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  CHAP. 

The  isolated  family  is  called  in  from  the  barren 
lands  about  its  rural  cabin,  but  too  often  it  is  re- 
deemed from  isolation  only  that  its  helplessness  may 
bring  profit  to  the  instrument  of  its  redemption.  It 
is  put  to  dwell  within  the  factory  enclosure;  its  in- 
stinctive desire  to  live  somewhat  to  itself,  to  own  a 
little  land,  to  have  a  home,  is  denied  ;  it  must  be  "  the 
company's  "  tenant,  it  must  —  usually  —  trade  at  "  the 
company's  store,"  its  children  are  to  go  upon  "the  com- 
pany's roll."  The  child  is  trained  almost  from  infancy 
into  a  certain  human  and  economic  dependence  upon 
one  particular  industry.  If  it  have  a  few  months, 
now  and  then,  for  schooling,  it  must  go  to  "  the  com- 
pany's school."  If  the  family  go  to  worship,  there 
is  at  the  larger  mills  "  the  company's  church,"  a 
chapel  in  which  the  salary  of  the  minister  and  his 
helpers  is  defrayed  by  the  same  resourceful  and  gen- 
erous "  company  "  —  the  company,  by  the  way,  which 
has  charged  that  the  enactment  of  a  child-labor  law 
would  be  paternalism ! 

Here  and  there  the  exceptional  child,  through  an 
exceptional  virility,  rises  out  of  the  enfolding  powers 
of  the  system ;  here  and  there  a  life  escapes.  But 
as  a  rule  the  system  is  effective ;  and  the  familiar 
saying,  "  once  an  operative,  always  an  operative," 
rings  all  too  seriously  true.  The  operatives  remain 
a  fixed  and  semi-dependent  class.  One  manufacturer 
bluntly  informed  me  that  he  wished  them  to  remain 
so,  upon  the  double  ground  that  they  would  then 
"  never  organize  and  would  never  want  or  get  high 
wages."  "My  business,"  said  he,  "is  a  low-wages 
business."  I  will  not  charge  that  his  temper  is  repre- 
sentative.    Many  of  the  manufacturers  honestly  and 


IV     THE  INDUSTRIAL  REVIVAL  AND  CHILD  LABOR      125 

earnestly  desire  the  progress  of  their  people.  But 
the  fact  remains  that  the  factory  system,  as  a  system, 
betrays  a  tendency  to  hold  its  humbler  industrial 
forces  in  a  state  of  arrested  development ;  which, 
from  the  broader  social  standpoint  and  in  relation 
to  the  larger  life  of  democracy,  means  an  arrested 
participation.  Here  is  an  eddy  in  the  fuller  and 
freer  current  of  democratic  life ;  here,  in  the  indus- 
trial imprisonment  of  the  child,  is  a  contradiction  — 
however  temporary — of  those  juster  and  deeper 
forces  which  are  claiming  the  human  possibilities 
of  the  individual  —  however  lowly  —  as  elements  in 
the  power  and  happiness  of  the  State. 


CHILD   LABOR   AND   THE  INDUSTRIAL 
SOUTH 


CHAPTER  V 

CHILD  LABOR  AND  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SOUTH  ^ 

Our  subject  brings  to  us  a  national  question.  And 
yet  I  must  begin  what  I  shall  try  to  say  to  you  this 
evening  with  a  disclaimer  and  an  explanation.  As 
my  disclaimer,  I  would  say  that  I  use  the  word 
"  national  "  in  no  political  or  federal  sense.  The  con- 
ditions of  industry  vary  so  greatly  and  so  decisively 
from  State  to  State  and  from  locality  to  locality  that 
the  enactment  of  a  federal  child-labor  law,  applicable 
to  all  conditions  and  under  all  circumstances,  would 
be  inadequate  if  not  unfortunate. 

As  my  explanation,  I  would  say  that  I  use  the 
word  "national"  in  that  geographical  sense  in  which 
we  must  all  say,  and  with  all  emphasis,  that  the  prob- 
lem of  child  labor  is  a  national  problem.  North  and 
South,  it  belongs  to  all  of  us.  If  the  proportionate 
number  of  child  workers  is  greatest  at  the  South,  the 
actual  number  of  child  workers,  in  the  year  1900,  was 
greater  in  the  one  State  of  Pennsylvania  than  in  all 
of  the  States  of  the  South  together.  Wherever  we 
find  the  factory  and  the  child,  we  find  the  working  of 
those  economic  and  human  forces  which  draw  the 

1  An  address  delivered  before  the  National  Conference  of  Charities 
and  Correction,  at  Atlanta,  Ga.,  May  9,  1903.  Reported  stenograph- 
ically,  and  revised  for  publication. 

K  129 


I30  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

child  into  the  processes  of  industrial  production. 
The  factory,  like  every  instrumentality  of  progress, 
brings  its  blessings  and  its  evils.  Let  us  recognize 
its  blessings.  Let  us  yield  to  those  blessings,  potent 
and  far-reaching  as  they  are,  an  intelligent  and 
generous  measure  of  appreciation  and  applause. 
But  let  us  also  have  an  intelligent  perception  of  the 
evils  of  the  factory,  and  let  us  resolutely  bring  to 
those  evils  —  in  the  name  of  our  children,  our 
country,  and  our  industries  —  such  remedies  as  we 
may  be  able  to  secure. 

While  it  may  be  somewhat  depressing  for  us  to 
realize  that  the  industrial  development  of  our  country 
bears  its  curse,  it  is  inspiring  to  remember  that  the 
realization  of  this  curse  has  revealed  the  essential 
soundness  of  the  national  heart.  If  child  labor  is  a 
general  evil,  the  general  recognition  of  this  evil  has 
brought  —  in  the  recent  successive  victories  of  child- 
labor  legislation  —  the  most  conspicuous  evidence 
of  the  inherent  right-mindedness  of  American  life 
with  which  I  am  familiar.  In  Texas,  in  Alabama,  in 
South  Carolina,  in  North  Carolina,  in  Virginia,  Il- 
linois, New  Hampshire,  New  York,  —  in  State  after 
State,  in  locality  after  locality,  —  the  common  con- 
science of  the  land  has  pierced  the  sophistries  by 
which  men  would  bind  the  children  to  the  drudgery 
of  factory  and  mine,  and  has  written  its  solicitude  and 
its  compassions  in  the  terms  of  law.^ 

Much  of  this  legislation  has  been  inadequate.     In 

1  See  an  admirable  summary  of  the  child-labor  legislation  of  the 
United  States  in  the  Hand  Book  for  1904,  compiled  by  Madeleine  W. 
Sykes  and  Josephine  Goldmark ;  National  Consumers'  League,  105 
East  Twenty-second  Street,  New  York  City.  See  also  Report  of  the 
U.S.  Commissioner  of  Education,  1902,  Vol.  II,  p.  2347. 


V        CHILD   LABOR  AND   THE   INDUSTRIAL   SOUTH       131 

some  States  it  has  represented  the  effort  to  reaffirm 
and  to  reenforce  the  intention  of  older  statutes;  in 
other  States  it  has  represented  the  first  expHcit  recogni- 
tion of  the  State's  responsibility  toward  the  more 
defenceless  elements  of  an  industrial  society,  toward 
the  potential  citizenship  of  the  industrial  child.  In 
all  cases,  however,  —  whether  in  response  to  the 
demand  for  law  enactment  or  for  law  enforcement,  — 
the  heart  of  our  country.  North  and  South,  has  shown 
itself  to  be  a  sound  heart,  and  the  soul  of  the  Republic 
has  kept  watch  above  its  children.  When  we  contrast 
the  recent  victories  of  child-labor  legislation,  victories 
so  speedily  secured,  with  the  long  struggle  of  the 
heroic  Shaftesbury,  we  gather  an  evidence,  a  signal 
and  gracious  evidence,  of  one  of  the  ennobling  dis- 
tinctions between  his  generation  and  our  own. 

In  speaking  to  you  this  evening,  I  wish,  however, 
to  deal  as  concretely  and  as  definitely  as  I  can  with 
certain  phases  of  the  struggle  for  legislation  in  our 
Southern  States.  I  have  consented  to  do  so,  not  be- 
cause I  would  ignore  the  evils  of  the  North  or  would 
exaggerate  the  difficulties  of  the  South,  but  because  an 
account  of  the  controversial  experience  of  one  section 
in  relation  to  a  great  and  vital  industrial  issue  may 
be  of  some  possible  value  to  the  experience  of  other 
sections. 

At  a  very  early  period  in  the  history  of  our  move- 
ment for  legislation,  our  proposal  of  a  child-labor  law 
was  met  by  a  counter  proposal.  There  were  manu- 
facturers who  admitted  the  existence  of  evils,  who 
lamented  the  prevalence  of  conditions  which  they 
protested  that  they  were  anxious  to  rectify,  but  who 
assured  us  that  the  real  remedy  was  not  the  prohibi- 


132  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap, 

tion  of  child  labor,  but  the  enforcement  of  compulsory 
education.  The  suggestion  possessed  an  engaging 
plausibility.  And  yet  I  confess  that  I  believe  it  to  be 
well  to  survey  with  a  watchful  interest  and  a  some- 
what exacting  analysis  the  remedies  offered  by  those 
who  have  permitted,  and  who  may  have  profited  by, 
the  very  evils  to  be  remedied.  Under  such  condi- 
tions, the  counter  proposal  is  sometimes  only  the 
most  deceptive  element  in  a  neat  and  effective 
machinery  of  estoppel.  This  impression  was  not 
abated  by  an  examination  of  the  terms  in  which  the 
proposal  was  conveyed.  One  of  the  most  aggressive 
of  its  advocates  was  a  representative  of  New  England 
who  has  been  largely  interested  in  cotton-mill  prop- 
erties at  the  South. ^  In  the  columns  of  the  Evening 
Transcript  of  Boston  he  declared  that  the  thing  for 
Alabama  to  do  was  simply  to  follow  the  example  of 
Massachusetts,  pass  a  law  for  compulsory  education, 
and,  presto,  the  problem  would  be  solved.  We  found, 
however,  that  the  physician  was  not  ready  for  his 
remedy.  He  was  careful  to  add  that  any  compulsory 
education  law  which  might  be  passed  in  Alabama 
should  "of  course"  not  become  operative  till  after 
the  passage  of  similar  laws  in  the  States  of  North 
Carolina,  South  CaroUna,  and  Georgia.  This  enthusi- 
asm for  reform,  only  on  condition  that  all  the  rest 
of  the  world  will  reform  too,  is  somewhat  familiar  to 
the  students  of  the  history  of  economic  progress. 

I  do  not  quite  know  why  the  representative  of 
Massachusetts  investments  at  the  South  should  have 
opposed  a  child-labor  law,  why  he  should  have  felt 
compelled  to  reject  one  method   of  reform  because 

^  See  Appendix  B,  p.  320. 


V        CHILD    LABOR   AND   THE   INDUSTRIAL   SOUTH       133 

Alabama  would  not  accept  another;  but  men  have  been 
known  to  attempt  the  blocking  of  a  reform  which  is 
clearly  possible  by  the  safe  and  vigorous  proposal  of 
a  reform  which  is  impossible.  That  a  child-labor  law 
was  practicable,  and  that  under  our  local  conditions  a 
compulsory  education  law  was  impracticable  and  im- 
possible, was  evident  to  the  vast  majority  of  the 
friends  of  progress  in  Alabama. 

The  counter  proposal  was  as  inadequate  as  it  was 
impracticable.  What  would  compulsory  education 
mean  in  our  Southern  States  .-'  Would  such  a  provi- 
sion mean  at  the  South  what  a  similar  measure  would 
mean  in  the  States  of  the  North .?  It  has  been  so 
assumed,  and  as  the  proposal  has  been  urged  upon 
us,  our  Northern  friends  have  naturally  made  their 
mental  pictures,  pictures  constructed  from  the  mate- 
rials of  their  local  experience,  in  which  they  have 
seen  the  children  freed  from  the  mills  by  the  simple 
operation  of  a  nine  months'  compulsory  attendance 
upon  the  schools.  But  at  the  time  when  that  sugges- 
tion—  with  such  commendable  fervor  —  was  urged 
upon  the  friends  of  protective  legislation,  the  public 
school  term  of  the  Carolinas  was  but  seventy-six  days 
and  the  public  school  term  of  Alabama  was  but 
seventy-eight  days.  Those  terms  are  somewhat  longer 
now.  And  yet  you  can  easily  see  that  with  so  inade- 
quate a  school  term  this  counter  proposal  of  compul- 
sory education  could  hardly  have  been  regarded  as  a 
counter  remedy.  Even  if  adopted,  it  would  have  left 
the  children  of  our  humbler  classes,  for  the  greater 
part  of  the  year,  entirely  available  for  the  factories. 
The  programme  made  possible  by  this  counter  proposal 
could  have  been  expressed  within  a  sentence,  —  "For 


134  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

the  little  children  of  the  poor,  three  months  in  the 
school,  nine  months  in  the  mill." 

Whatever  the  advantages  of  a  policy  of  compulsory 
education,  I  think  you  will  at  once  agree  with  me 
that  such  a  measure  could  be  no  adequate  substitute 
for  a  child-labor  law.  It  is  obviously  true  that  we 
cannot  reach  a  comprehensive  bettering  of  conditions 
by  the  mere  enactment  of  an  age  limit  for  employ- 
ment, nor  by  any  of  the  expedients  of  a  purely  nega- 
tive and  corrective  legislation.  All  this  we  have  not 
failed  to  realize.  But  we  have  thought  it  best  to  do 
for  the  children  of  the  factories  the  one  best  possible 
thing  now  obtainable  in  our  Southern  States ;  for  if 
we  cannot  yet  secure  for  every  child  a  fixed  attend- 
ance upon  the  school,  we  can  at  least  secure  for  the 
younger  children  that  industrial  freedom  which  will 
afford  them  the  possibility  of  the  school.  If  we  can- 
not compel  them  to  be  educated,  we  can  at  least 
permit  them  to  be  educated.  And  how  men  who 
claim  to  be  in  favor  of  compulsory  education  can  at 
the  same  time  oppose  the  prohibition  of  child  labor  is 
somewhat  difficult  for  the  uninstructed  intelligence  to 
understand,  — inasmuch  as  the  present  factory  system 
of  our  country  with  its  low  wages  and  its  long  hours 
obviously  represents,  as  it  touches  the  lives  of  the 
children,  a  system  of  compulsory  ignorance. 

The  movement  for  the  prohibition  of  the  labor  in 
factories  of  our  children  under  twelve  has  also  been 
opposed  by  what  I  have  regarded  as  a  mistaken  com- 
mercial prejudice.  A  few  representatives  of  our 
"business  interests,"  under  the  leadership  of  some  of 
the  narrower  trade  journals  of  the  South,  have  dis- 
puted  the   wisdom   of   protective   legislation.     Such 


V        CHILD   LABOR  AND  THE   INDUSTRIAL   SOUTH       135 

opposition  was  inevitable.  It  has  made  plausible 
appeals  to  familiar  forces.  "  Business  "  is  everywhere 
a  word  of  mighty  omen.  It  is  altogether  natural  that 
it  should  be  so.  At  the  South,  especially,  we  have 
come  to  look  with  peculiar  appreciation  upon  those 
practical  and  material  forces  which  have  wrought 
the  rehabilitation  of  the  land.  After  the  desolation 
of  war,  and  after  the  more  bitter  desolation  of  the 
period  which  followed  war,  it  is  inevitable  that  the 
question  of  bread-winning  should  have  become  with 
many  of  our  people  a  question  of  absorbing  and 
paramount  importance.  "Prosperity,"  commercial 
and  industrial  "  prosperity,"  has  been  a  name  of 
mystic  and  constraining  force.  To  invite  "  pros- 
perity "  has  been  a  form  of  patriotism.  To  alienate 
"  prosperity  "  has  seemed  almost  like  apostasy. 

When,  therefore,  we  offered  the  proposals  of 
protective  legislation  for  the  children,  we  were  met 
with  protests.  We  were  greeted  with  indignant 
questions:  "Do  you  not  see  that  this  legislation 
will  touch  the  cotton  factories  ?  "  —  "  Do  you  not 
know  that  the  cotton  factories  are  the  agents  of 
prosperity  ?  "  —  "  Do  you  want  to  compromise  or  to 
arrest  the  prosperity  of  the  South  ?  "  —  "  Do  you  not 
know  that  this  child-labor  law  is  an  attack  upon  busi- 
ness .''  "  It  was  thus  that  we  were  questioned  ;  and  yet 
such  questions,  I  submit  to  you,  were  in  themselves 
as  gross  and  as  insidious  an  insult  as  was  ever  offered 
to  the  "  business "  and  the  "  prosperity "  of  our 
Southern  States.  For  what  do  they  imply  .-*  They 
imply,  if  they  mean  anything  whatever,  that  there  is 
some  inherent  and  essential  connection  between  the 
prosperity  of  the  South  and  the  labor  of  little  children 


136  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

under  twelve  years  of  age.  They  imply  that  the  busi- 
ness success  of  the  South  is  in  some  way  involved  in 
the  right  to  throw  the  burdens  of  employment  upon 
the  immature.  They  carry  the  suggestion  that  our 
material  progress  is  dependent  upon  unwholesome 
economic  and  humanitarian  conditions,  and  that  the 
development  of  the  South  is  possibly  contingent  upon 
the  prolonged,  enforced,  and  unnatural  labor  of  the 
defenceless  and  the  helpless.  I  resent  that  imputa- 
tion. I  resent  that  suggestion  not  only  in  the  name 
of  the  South  at  large  but  in  the  name  of  the  business 
interests  and  the  conservative  commercial  forces  of 
our  Southern  States  ;  and  I  contend  that  from  these 
laws  to  protect  our  children  under  twelve  no  damage 
can  result  to  our  business  interests,  —  no  damage 
comparable  to  the  damage  which  would  result  from 
the  general  acceptance  of  the  impression  that  child 
labor  is  the  basis  of  our  success,  and  that  with  the 
restriction  of  child  labor  there  would  follow  a  restric- 
tion of  our  industrial  development.  I  solemnly  declare 
that  the  forces  which  are  injuring  the  prosperity  and 
compromising  the  industrial  repute  of  the  South  are 
the  agencies,  political  or  journalistic,  which  have 
tended  to  give  currency  to  that  assumption,  and 
which,  by  their  opposition  to  protective  legislation 
for  the  younger  children,  have  made  our  progress 
synonymous,  in  many  minds,  with  the  baser  methods 
and  the  retrogressive  policies  of  production.  These 
are  the  agencies  which,  despite  their  lavish  zeal,  are 
injuring  the  standing  of  Southern  investments  and 
Southern  properties.  And  I  as  solemnly  declare  that 
the  men  who  are  to-day  befriending  the  industrial 
South  are  the  men,  men  in  commerce,  in  the  trades, 


V       CHILD   LABOR  AND  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SOUTH       137 

in  the  professions,  men  of  every  phase  of  contem- 
porary Southern  experience,  who  in  eight  States  of  the 
South  have  rejected  this  leadership,  have  welcomed 
the  prohibition  of  the  labor  of  the  younger  children, 
have  resolved  to  free  their  properties  from  any  occa- 
sion for  prejudicial  discussion  and  oblique  advertise- 
ment, and  have  given  notice  to  the  world  that  the 
prosperity  of  the  South  is  based,  not  on  the  labor  of 
the  immature,  but  on  the  fertility  of  her  fields,  the 
advantages  of  her  climate,  her  cotton,  her  ores,  her 
forests,  her  waters,  and  —  above  all  —  upon  the  char- 
acter and  the  capacities  of  her  manhood. 

We  have  also  been  met  by  the  manifestation  of 
what  I  must  not  hesitate  to  call  a  false  humanitarian 
prejudice.  We  have  been  assured  that  "  these  chil- 
dren are  much  better  off  in  the  mills  than  they  were 
out  of  the  mills."  And  indeed  I  confess  it  to  be 
somewhat  hard  to  deal  with  the  arguments  of  those 
who  end  by  defending  as  a  benefit  what  they  have 
begun  by  denying  as  an  evil.  We  were  first  assured 
that  there  were  practically  no  little  children  in  the 
mills.  The  reports  of  the  Twelfth  Census  of  the 
United  States^  show  that  in  the  States  outside 
the  South  the  relative  number  of  the  cotton-mill 
employees  under  sixteen  years  of  age  had,  in  twenty 
years,  been  reduced  from  15.6  per  cent  to  J.y  per 
cent ;  but  that  in  the  cotton  mills  of  the  South,  dur- 
ing this  period  from  1880  to  1900,  the  relative  num- 
ber of  the  operatives  under  sixteen  years  of  age  had 
remained  at  approximately  25  per  cent.  Yet  we 
were  assured  that  few  of  these  were  under  twelve. 
Just   how   many,   as  a  matter  of   fact,  were   under 

1  See  Bulletin  No.  215,  on  Cotton  Manufactures. 


138  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

twelve,  no  man  can  accurately  say.  We  began  our 
movement  for  reforms  with  every  effort  to  secure  the 
definite  data  of  exact  conditions.  Weeks  were  spent 
in  laborious  investigation,  only  to  find  that  the  evi- 
dence was  contradicted  as  rapidly  as  it  was  collected. 
The  most  notorious  facts  were  subjected  to  solemn 
and  peremptory  denial.  We  soon  found  that  our 
best  recourse  in  debate,  a  recourse  abundantly  con- 
vincing, was  simply  to  assume  what  our  opponents 
were  on  every  hand  compelled,  conspicuously,  to 
admit.  On  one  day  we  might  find  the  representatives 
of  the  factories  declaring  that  the  mills  contained 
practically  no  children  under  twelve  ;  but  on  the  next 
day  we  found  them  thronging  the  lobby  of  the  legis- 
lature to  prevent  the  passage  of  a  law  which  might 
take  those  under  twelve  out  of  the  factories.  "  Why," 
we  asked,  "do  you  oppose  a  law  prohibiting  some- 
thing which  nobody  wishes  to  do;  why  object  to 
the  abridgment  of  a  liberty  which  nobody  wishes 
to  exercise  }  "  Under  such  persuasions  it  was  hard  to 
believe  that  there  were  no  factories  employing,  or 
desiring  the  employment  of,  many  of  the  younger 
children.  And  yet  these  protestations  have  become 
an  interesting  evidence  of  sensitiveness.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  discover  that  the  employment  of  the  younger 
children,  the  children  for  whom  legislation  had  been 
invoked,  was  thus  denied,  emphatically,  as  an  evil. 

Yet  strangely  enough  we  straightway  find  that  their 
employment  is  admitted  and  defended  as  a  benefit. 
We  are  told  that  "  these  children  are  much  better  off 
in  the  mills  than  they  were  in  the  places  where  they 
came  from."  I  question  whether  it  is  ever  fair  to 
estimate  our  duty  to  the  child  by  the  disadvantages 


V       CHILD   LABOR  AND  THE  INDUSTRIAL  SOUTH       139 

of  its  past.  But  is  the  contention  true  ?  Is  the  labor 
of  the  mills  a  philanthropic  provision  for  the  children 
under  twelve  ?  To  hear  some  of  our  opponents  dwell 
upon  the  mill  as  a  philanthropy,  you  would  suppose 
the  average  child  could  find  in  the  average  cotton 
mill  a  comprehensive  educational  equipment  —  a  sort 
of  institutional  civilizer :  —  kindergarten,  grammar 
school,  high  school,  university,  —  and  a  trip  to 
Europe,  all  in  one.  Do  not  believe  one  word  of  it ! 
It  is  true,  in  some  instances,  that  the  general  condi- 
tion of  the  child  at  the  mills  is  better  and  happier 
than  the  condition  of  the  same  child  before  coming 
to  the  mills.  I  say,  "in  some  instances,"  because  in 
many  cases  the  child  is  less  fortunate  than  before. 
But,  in  the  cases  in  which  the  change  is  a  change  to 
better  things,  is  the  bettering  of  the  fortune  of  the 
child  the  result  of  child  labor,  or  the  result  of  the 
general  bettering  of  the  condition  of  the  family  ? 
Let  us  be  clear  about  this. 

It  is  true  that  the  outward  lot  of  the  child  of  the 
mill  family  is  sometimes  better  than  that  of  the  poor 
white  child  of  the  country.  But  where  this  is  true, 
it  is  true  not  because  of  child  labor,  but  in  spite  of  it. 
There  are  men  at  the  East  who  claim  that  the  condi- 
tion of  the  child  in  the  sweat-shop  is  a  "  vast  improve- 
ment" on  the  condition  of  the  child  in  the  crowded 
foreign  city  where  it  once  lived.  Does  that  prove 
that  the  sweat-shop  labor  of  its  tiny  hands  is  respon- 
sible for  the  change .-'  No.  Is  child  labor  responsible 
for  the  better  condition  of  the  factory  child  ?  Its  life 
may  share  in  the  general  improvement  of  conditions, 
but  the  child,  instead  of  receiving,  as  childhood 
should,  the  maximum  of  immunity  from  distress,  and 


140  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

the  largest  freedom  which  the  new  environment 
affords,  is  bearing  in  its  tender  strength  the  greatest 
burden  and  the  heaviest  curse  of  the  new  prosperity. 
Let  us  not  be  guilty  of  mental  confusion.  Let  us  not 
credit  the  good  fortune  of  the  family  to  the  misfortune 
of  the  child. 

The  cotton  mills,  indeed  our  factories  of  every  sort, 
are  bringing  their  blessings  to  the  South.  They  are 
touching  with  inspiring  and  creative  power  the  fate 
of  some  of  the  poorer  people  of  our  isolated  locali- 
ties, are  enabling  them  to  shift  the  industrial  basis  of 
their  lives  from  the  conditions  of  agriculture,  in  which 
they  may  have  failed,  to  the  conditions  of  manufac- 
ture, in  which  I  trust  they  will  at  length  succeed. 
Let  us  grant,  not  reluctantly  but  gladly,  the  possible 
blessings  of  the  factory.  But  let  us  stick,  resolutely 
and  persistently,  to  the  question  now  at  issue.  That 
question  is  not  the  economic  and  social  advantage  of 
the  factory.  Upon  that  we  may  be  all  agreed.  The 
question  now  at  issue  is  not  the  question  as  to  whether 
the  factory  is  an  advantage,  but  the  question  as  to 
whether  the  advantages  and  the  blessings  of  the  fac- 
tory, to  the  community  or  to  the  child,  are  based  upon 
the  labor  of  our  children  under  twelve.  That  is  our 
question. 

I  yield  all  legitimate  credit  to  our  factories.  I 
yield  instant  and  explicit  tribute  to  those  men  among 
us  —  no  matter  how  greatly  they  may  differ  from  me 
upon  the  question  of  child  labor  —  who  have  given  of 
their  abilities  and  their  fortunes  to  the  upbuilding  of 
the  industrial  South.  But  I  protest  that  the  economic 
and  social  advantage  of  the  factory  has  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  this  question  in  debate,  and  I  further 


V       CHILD   LABOR   AND   THE  INDUSTRIAL   SOUTH       141 

protest  that  when  these  questions  are  confused,  when 
men  assume  that  the  advantages  of  the  factory  to  the 
community  and  to  the  child  are  based  upon  the  mo- 
notonous and  confining  labor  of  our  younger  children, 
they  are  wronging  not  merely  the  community  and 
the  children  but  our  factories  as  well. 

In  the  course  of  this  discussion  at  the  South,  there 
has  also  been  much  appeal  to  the  interests  of  an 
undiscriminating  industrial  policy.  There  is  much 
prejudice  against  labor  unionism.  The  South,  upon 
economic  and  social  issues,  is  intensely  and  overwhelm- 
ingly conservative.  Because,  therefore,  the  child-labor 
bills  have  had  the  sympathy  of  the  labor  unions,  there 
have  been  men  who  have  attacked  them  as  labor 
measures.  They  have  opposed  a  child-labor  law  be- 
cause the  labor  unions  have  approved  it.  Such  men, 
if  they  followed  the  logic  of  their  argument,  would  go 
back  on  the  Ten  Commandments  if  the  labor  unions 
should  make  a  declaration  of  sympathy  with  the  Deca- 
logue. Now,  I  hold  no  brief  for  the  labor  unions. 
I  am  free  to  say,  however,  that  when  the  capitalist 
opposes  protective  legislation  for  our  children  on  the 
ground  that  the  labor  union  has  approved  it,  he  in- 
jures the  interests  of  capital  far  more  than  he  injures 
the  interests  of  the  union.  I  can  tell  our  friend  the 
capitalist  —  and  he  is  my  friend  —  that  just  now  the 
most  striking  and  the  most  general  encouragement  of 
labor  unionism  in  this  section  of  our  country  is  the 
fact  that  upon  the  one  most  vital,  most  practical, 
most  popular  industrial  issue  before  the  South  to-day 
labor  unionism  has  got  upon  the  right  side,  and 
"capital"  has  too  often  been  upon  the  wrong  side. 
Strictly  from  the  selfish  standpoint  of  the  capitalistic 


142  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

interest,  what  is  the  inevitable  result  of  the  joining  of 
such  an  issue  ?  That  result  might  easily  have  been 
predicted.  The  popular  sympathy,  the  public  opinion 
of  the  South,  has  been  drawn  as  never  before  to  the 
side  of  labor  unionism,  and  it  has  come  to  question,  as 
never  before,  some  of  the  too  familiar  methods  and 
policies  of  organized  capital.  In  a  conflict  between 
the  organized  forces  of  labor  and  the  organized  forces 
of  the  employers,  it  is  absolutely  inevitable,  as  the 
whole  history  of  civilization  might  have  informed  us, 
that  the  great  common,  fundamental  instincts  of 
humanity  were  bound  to  go  to  the  side  which  has 
represented  the  need  and  the  appeal  of  the  defence- 
less. I  am  glad  to  say  that  thousands  of  the  business 
men  of  the  South  have  recognized  this  fact,  have 
recognized  it  not  only  in  justice  to  themselves  but  in 
justice  to  our  children  of  the  mills,  and  have  labored 
in  season  and  out  of  season  for  wise  and  righteous 
measures  of  reform. 

These  are  the  men  who  have  represented  the  wiser 
and  higher  conscience  of  our  industrial  development. 
For  we  touch  at  this  point  certain  profounder  issues 
in  the  industrial  policy  of  the  South  than  the  mere 
issue  between  unionism  and  capitalism.  One  is  an 
issue  which  touches  the  ethical  assumptions,  the 
moral  standards  of  our  economic  progress ;  the  other 
touches  the  old,  old  issue  between  sagacity  and 
stupidity,  between  wisdom  and  folly,  between  justice 
and  selfishness,  as  we  deal  with  the  human  factors 
of  industrial  greatness. 

The  South  has  one  great  characteristic  natural 
product  —  her  cotton.  In  its  possession  she  is  with- 
out a  rival.     Her  monopoly  may  be  challenged,  but 


V        CHILD    LABOR   AND  THE   INDUSTRIAL   SOUTH       143 

her  preeminence  will  remain.  Upon  the  basis  of 
this  great  and  characteristic  natural  product  we  are 
creating  a  great,  characteristic,  and  commanding  indus- 
try —  cotton  manufacture.  Its  successes  and  its  vic- 
tories are  as  inevitable  as  they  are  desirable.  It  can 
have  no  enemies  unless  we  constitute  ourselves  its 
enemies.  It  can  have  no  perils  unless  we  ourselves 
found  it  in  embarrassment  and  league  it  with  disas- 
ter. Its  growth,  its  triumphs,  its  opportunities,  its 
rewards,  its  infamy  or  its  glory  are  a  part  of  the  dis- 
tinctive heritage  of  our  children  and  of  our  children's 
children.  What  is  the  basis  of  this  industry  ?  What 
shall  be  its  economic  and  moral  character .''  How  are 
we  settling  it  and  founding  it  ?  This  is  the  issue,  the 
intimate  and  inclusive  issue,  of  this  question  of  child 
labor  at  the  South.  I  am  interested,  therefore,  in 
the  question  of  child  labor,  not  merely  for  the  sake 
of  our  children  of  the  mills,  not  merely  because  I 
have  seen  and  photographed  children  of  six  and 
seven  years  who  were  at  labor  in  our  factories  for 
twelve  and  thirteen  hours  a  day,  not  merely  because 
I  have  seen  them  with  their  little  fingers  mangled  by 
machinery  and  their  little  bodies  numb  and  listless 
with  exhaustion,  but  because  I  am  not  willing  that 
our  whole  economic  progress  should  be  involved  in 
such  conditions;  and  because  as  a  Southern  man, 
born,  reared,  and  educated  in  the  South,  I  am 
resolved  to  take  my  part,  however  humbly,  in  the 
settling  of  the  industrial  character  of  this  our  great- 
est industry.  Because  I  belong  to  the  South  and 
because  I  love  the  South,  I  do  not  want  its  most 
important  and  distinctive  industry  to  stand  under  any 
sort  of  odium,  moral  or  economic.     I  believe  that  an 


144  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  CHAP. 

intelligent  moral  interest  in  the  conditions  of  the  fac- 
tory, and  the  jealous  guarding  of  its  ethical  assump- 
tions, will  minister  not  merely  to  the  humanity  of  its 
standards  and  the  happiness  of  its  operatives,  but 
to  the  dignity,  currency,  and  value  of  its  properties. 
In  the  interest  of  its  success  as  well  as  in  the 
interest  of  its  renown,  I  wish  its  repute  to  be  as 
fair  as  the  white  fields  of  our  cotton.  Command- 
ing the  economic  and  moral  confidence  of  the  in- 
vestors in  our  securities,  of  the  spectators  of  our 
progress,  of  the  enlightened  and  approving  opinion 
of  mankind,  I  wish  this  industry  to  take  its  place 
among  us  as  one  of  the  noblest  as  well  as  one  of 
the  greatest  of  the  productive  forces  of  our  century 
and  our  civilization. 

We  must,  moreover,  settle  once  for  all  the  indus- 
trial policy  of  the  South  as  that  policy  touches  the 
human  factors  of  industrial  greatness.  In  thinking 
so  much  about  sociology,  let  us  not  forget  to  think 
a  little  about  childhood,  —  nor  about  childhood  only, 
but  also  about  the  children.  The  two  things  are  not 
synonymous.  Such  are  the  academic  hypocrisies  of 
humanity  that  the  "  age  of  chivalry,"  the  age  which 
talked  so  nobly  and  so  inordinately  of  womanhood, 
did  comparatively  little  for  its  women.  And  our 
age,  which  talks  very  beautifully  of  childhood  and 
the  child,  is  finding  in  its  entrancing  preoccupations 
much  opportunity  to  neglect  its  children. 

To  this  neglect  the  South  cannot  and  —  I  thank 
God  —  will  not  yield.  If  the  cotton,  the  crude  mate- 
rial of  our  industries,  is  peculiarly  the  South's,  so 
the  human  factors  of  our  industry  are  also  ours. 
The    children    of    our    Northern    mills  —  as    Miss 


V        CHILD   LABOR  AND  THE   INDUSTRIAL   SOUTH       145 

Addams  ^  could  inform  you — are  largely  the  chil- 
dren of  the  foreigner.  If  the  Northern  States  can 
legislate  to  protect  the  children  of  the  foreigner, 
surely  we  can  legislate  to  protect  the  children  of  the 
South.  I  speak  not  in  jealousy  of  the  foreigner  — 
God  forbid! — but  I  dare  not  speak  in  forgetfulness 
of  our  own,  of  the  children  of  these  humbler  people 
of  our  Southern  soil  —  a  people  native  to  our  section 
and  our  interests ;  of  our  own  race  and  blood,  slowly 
preparing  for  their  share  in  the  advancing  largeness 
of  our  life,  and  worthy  through  their  children  of 
to-day  to  constitute  an  ever  increasing  factor  in  the 
broader  and  happier  citizenship  of  our  future  years. 

They  are  called  a  "  poor  "  white  people ;  but  from 
that  knowledge  of  them  which  has  come  through  a 
long  experience  of  affectionate  and  famihar  contact, 
I  can  say  that  their  poverty  is  not  the  essential  pov- 
erty of  inward  resources,  but  rather  the  temporary 
and  incidental  poverty  of  unfortunate  conditions. 
They  are  rich  in  capacities  and  aptitudes.  The  ex- 
ploitation of  their  children,  though  their  own  igno- 
rance may  sometimes  make  them  a  party  to  its 
processes,  is  a  crime  not  only  against  the  rights  of 
the  defenceless,  but  a  crime  against  the  economic 
progress  and  the  industrial  future  of  the  South. 
Why,  the  man  upon  the  farm  does  not  put  the  bur- 
den of  sustained  employment  upon  the  immature 
among  his  cattle.  Shall  we  be  less  solicitous  of  our 
children .''  If  cotton  manufacture  is  to  continue  to 
thrive  at  the  South,  it  can  do  so  only  upon  the  basis 
of  the  intelligence  and  efficiency  of  its  operatives. 

^  The  preceding  speaker,  Miss  Jane  Addams,  of  Hull  House, 
Chicago. 


146  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

Ignorance  and  helplessness  may  make  the  profits  of 
an  hour,  but  the  increasing  and  abiding  wealth  of 
a  great  industry  lies  only  in  the  hands  of  knowledge, 
capacity,  and  skill.  Sustained  labor  in  the  factory 
has  always  tended  to  arrest  the  mental  and  physical 
development  of  the  child,  and  so  to  lower  the  pro- 
ductive power  of  the  operative.  An  industrial  State 
which  throws  the  burdens  of  employment  upon  its 
children  of  tender  years  burns  its  candle  at  both 
ends.  The  South  makes  comparatively  small  gains 
from  immigration.  The  sacrifice  of  the  childhood  of 
our  poorer  people,  the  exhaustion  of  their  best  skill 
and  of  their  fullest  vigor  and  inteUigence  means 
nothing  less  than  the  exploitation  of  our  one  indige- 
nous industrial  population,  the  real  hope  of  the  tex- 
tile future  of  our  Southern  States. 

The  potential  industrial  and  moral  wealth  repre- 
sented by  the  child  belongs,  moreover,  not  to  the 
eager  avarice  of  a  single  industry,  but  to  the  growing 
body  of  social  opportunities  and  needs.  Society  has 
need  of  the  children,  for  it  has  need  of  the  fullest 
womanhood  and  manhood.  Its  right  to  protect  the 
child  is  based  upon  this  need  as  well  as  upon  the 
need  of  the  child.  A  human  life  is  a  continuous 
and  expanding  asset  of  social  promise  and  fulfilment. 
Stooping  over  the  tiny  spring,  a  single  man  might 
drain  it  at  the  moment  of  its  first  leap  into  the  sun- 
light. But  Nature  hides  the  spring  away ;  keeps  it 
within  the  kindly  and  secret  protection  of  the  cool 
forest  or  the  unyielding  granite.  Thus  she  nurses  it 
into  charm  and  fulness.  As  it  flows,  it  grows.  Its 
freedom  gathers  an  access  of  volume  and  motion  as 
it  runs.     Out  of  its  fulness  and  its  freedom,  receiv- 


V        CHILD   LABOR  AND   THE  INDUSTRIAL  SOUTH       147 

ing  tribute  from  earth  and  sky  and  flower,  yielding 
tribute  to  every  thirsting  thing,  the  brook  leaps  at 
last,  as  a  tiny  pulse,  into  the  river's  arm,  that  it  may 
lift  somewhat  of  the  burden  of  the  world.  So  all 
charm  and  all  power  have  come  out  of  a  hidden 
place.  So  all  Ufe  is  first  enfolded  within  the  protec- 
tion of  a  tender  and  secret  hand,  that,  with  every 
potential  force,  it  may  belong  at  length  to  the  labor 
and  welfare  of  the  years.  If  the  spring  had  been 
given  in  its  earliest  moment  to  the  thirst  of  one  de- 
vouring avarice,  the  valleys  would  have  lost  their 
noblest  and  fairest  wealth.  And  yet  there  are  those 
who  would  build  the  factory,  so  often  the  symbol  of 
our  ruthless  industrial  impatience,  over  the  heart- 
springs  of  the  childhood  of  the  South. 

The  world  cannot  permit  a  single  industry,  or  a 
half-dozen  industries,  to  hold  the  child  in  an  eco- 
nomic status  which  is  out  of  touch  with  the  assump- 
tions that  underlie  the  industrial,  educational,  and 
humanitarian  organization  of  our  human  life.  Under 
these  assumptions  the  function  of  the  child  is  not 
productive  but  receptive.  Upon  the  preservation  of 
this  function  depends  the  child's  future  productive 
power.  Its  protection  constitutes  one  of  the  strong- 
est as  well  as  one  of  the  holiest  interests  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  reversal  of  this  function,  upon  a  universal 
scale,  would  mean  the  degradation  and  extinction  of 
the  race.  Within  the  heart  of  the  child  lie  the  well- 
springs  of  the  future.  Its  freedom  means  the  free- 
dom of  our  country.  Its  power,  knit  through  the 
slow  years  of  free  and  happy  growth,  means  the 
power  of  our  armies.  Its  play,  its  joy,  its  growing 
knowledge,  its  simple  and  radiant  courage,  the  smil- 


148  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

ing,  teasing  challenge  of  its  irresponsibilities  and 
immunities,  constitute  (if  we  will  preserve  them  in 
their  unspoiled  freshness)  the  indestructible  sources 
of  the  power,  the  dignity,  the  culture,  the  laughter, 
the  freedom,  of  a  great  people. 

For,  my  friends,  these  children  are  no  mere  factors 
of  industry.  They  are  vital  and  personal  factors  of 
our  country  and  of  our  humanity.  They  are  heirs 
with  us  of  this  immediate  and  present  day,  this  day 
of  vivid  human  interests,  —  of  imperious  reciprocities, 
of  ever  enlarging  fidelities  between  land  and  land,  be- 
tween class  and  class,  between  life  and  life.  They 
are  the  heirs  with  us  of  a  deeper  and  more  compel- 
ling patriotism.  Back  of  the  patriotism  of  arms,  back 
of  the  patriotism  of  our  political  and  civic  life,  there 
lies,  like  a  new  and  commanding  social  motive,  the 
patriotism  of  efficiency.  Every  interest,  every  insti- 
tution, every  activity  of  our  day  must  reckon  with  it. 
It  is  not  merely  the  patriotism  of  industrial  power. 
It  is  the  patriotism  of  social  fitness  and  of  economic 
value.  It  is  the  passion  of  usefulness.  It  is  the  love 
of  being  useful,  and,  therefore,  the  love  of  helping 
others  into  usefulness.  The  man  must  be  worth 
something  to  his  country ;  his  country  must  be  worth 
something  to  the  world.  In  the  interest  of  our  coun- 
try and  of  our  world,  it  covets  for  every  human  life 
that  emancipation  which  means  the  freeing  of  capacity. 

It  is  this  patriotism  which  we  shall  invoke.  North 
and  South,  in  behalf  of  every  wounded,  helpless, 
defenceless  element  of  our  industrial  society.  It 
realizes  that  the  good  of  one  life  comes  only  out  of 
the  fulness  of  all  life ;  that  no  power  is  safe  which 
reposes  solely  upon  the  weakness  of  another;   that 


V       CHILD   LABOR  AND  THE  INDUSTRIAL   SOUTH       149 

no  liberty  is  safe  which  depends  upon  the  slavery  of 
another;  that  no  knowledge  is  safe  or  sound  which 
bases  itself  upon  the  ignorance  of  another ;  and  that 
no  wealth  has  reached  the  fulness  of  its  distinction 
and  its  happiness  which  depends  for  its  existence 
solely  upon  the  poverty  of  others.  It  is  to  the  im- 
mediate interest  of  every  man,  that  every  other  man 
should  have  something  to  give.  In  so  far  as  every 
life  becomes  a  producer  and  a  contributor,  every 
other  life  becomes  a  beneficiary.  Thus  the  meaning 
of  patriotism  is  but  the  nerve  and  instinct  of  so- 
ciety. To  bring  others  into  their  own  believing, 
hoping,  and  loving,  —  this  is  religion ;  to  share  with 
others  the  powers  of  acquiring,  and  thriving,  and 
rejoicing,  —  this  is  wealth;  to  open  to  others  the 
liberties  of  thinking,  and  knowing,  and  achieving, 
—  this  is  education ;  to  enlarge  for  others  the  glory 
of  living,  —  this  is  life ;  to  behold  the  great  throng- 
ing masses  of  men  alive  and  radiant  with  those  ca- 
pacities and  efficiencies  which  redeem  the  waste 
and  silence  of  the  world,  —  this  is  indeed  the  supreme 
efficiency,  and  this  I  believe  to  be  the  supreme 
patriotism. 


THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEGRO 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEGRO 


Politically,  there  still  exists  "the  solid  South"; 
yet,  for  the  more  intimate  phases  of  Southern  opinion 
in  relation  to  the  most  serious  of  Southern  problems, 
no  one  may  speak  as  a  represeiltative  authority.  In 
the  presence  of  the  negro,  we  may  say  truly  that  the 
mind  of  the  South  is  of  many  minds.  Just  as  the 
negro  divides  the  sentiment  of  the  North,  he  divides 
the  sentiment  of  the  South. 

Under  the  different  conditions  obtaining  to-day  in 
our  industrial  and  political  life,  from  year  to  year 
and  from  place  to  place,  the  negro  is  different  and 
the  white  man  is  different.  In  each  locality  of  the 
South,  the  problem  is,  therefore,  a  different  problem. 
Ultimately,  of  course,  the  problem  is  one  —  is  the 
mutual  social,  industrial,  and  political  adjustment 
upon  the  same  soil,  of  two  races  between  whom  the 
difference  in  color  is  perhaps  the  most  superficial  of- 
the  distinctions  which  divide  them. 

As  this  fundamental  problem,  however,  is  presented 
under  the  concrete  working  conditions  of  Southern 
life,  it  assumes  a  different  phase  in  each  State  of 
the  South,  in  each  county  of  the  several  States,  and 
even  in  the  separate  communities  of  each  particular 

153 


IS4 


THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 


CHAP. 


county.^  When  studied  in  the  city  where  the  white 
population  slightly  outnumbers  the  black,  where 
churches  and  schools  are  provided,  and  police  pro- 
tection is  abundant,  the  racial  conditions  of  such  a 
State  as  Alabama  present  one  problem  ;  in  an  adjoin- 
ing county,  where  the  negroes  outnumber  the  white 

1  "The  variety  of  conditions  in  different  parts  of  a  single  State  is 
often  greater  than  would  be  imagined.  If  one  were  to  say  that  certain 
counties  of  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Tennessee,  and  Alabama  contain 
fewer  negroes  than  certain  counties  of  New  Jersey,  Connecticut,  Massa- 
chusetts, or  Rhode  Island,  it  might  awaken  surprise.  But  the  figures 
for  a  number  of  counties  in  the  South  are  as  follows :  — 


Total 

Negroes 

Total 

Negroes 

Garrett,  Md. 

17,701 

126 

Unicoi,  Tenn. 

5,581 

130 

Buchanan,  Va. 

9,692 

5 

Union,  Tenn. 

12,894 

79 

Graham,  N.C. 

4,343 

26 

Van  Buren,  Tenn. 

3,326 

37 

Fentress,  Tenn. 

6,106 

25 

Towns,  Ga. 

4,748 

71 

Pickett,  Tenn. 

5,366 

II 

Cullman,  Ala. 

9,554 

21 

Sequatchie,  Tenn. 

3,326 

37 

Winston,  Ala. 

17,849 

7 

/ 


"  The  twelve  counties  contain  90,756  people,  of  whom  575  are 
negroes,  a  single  negro  to  175  of  the  population.  Nantucket  Island, 
Mass.,  contains  more  negroes  than  most  of  these  counties, 

"  But  again  it  may  cause  surprise  to  find  how  small  is  the  proportion 
of  white  people  in  some  counties.  In  Issaquena  County,  Mississippi, 
only  six  people  in  every  hundred  are  white,  and  there  are  five  other 
counties  in  which  the  per  cent  is  less  than  ten.  In  fourteen  counties 
in  the  South,  seven-eighths  of  the  people  are  negroes;  in  fifty-four 
counties,  three-quarters;  and  in  one  hundred  and  eight  counties,  two- 
thirds.  The  great  difference  in  race  proportions  in  different  counties 
is  shown  in  Alabama,  for  example,  where  the  proportion  varies  from 
Winston  County,  in  which  there  are  only  seven  negroes,  to  Lowndes, 
in  which  they  number  over  thirty  thousand. 

"  It  needs  no  argument  to  show  that  the  '  negro  problem '  is  quite 
a  different  thing  in  Winston  from  what  it  is  in  Lowndes."  —  George 
S.  DiCKERMAN,  in  the  Southern  Workman,  Hampton,  Va.,  January, 
1903. 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE  NEGRO  155 

people  six  to  one,  where  both  races  are  poor,  where 
schools  and  churches  are  not  numerous  or  usually 
impressive,  where  the  constabulary  is  necessarily  in- 
adequate, our  racial  conditions  present  what  may  be 
readily  understood  to  be  a  very  different  problem 
indeed. 

Even  in  the  rural  South,  the  problem,  as  suggested 
by  one  of  my  correspondents,  varies  from  neighbor- 
hood to  neighborhood.  It  is  one  thing  in  those 
regions  of  light  and  sandy  soil  where  the  farms  of 
the  white  man  and  the  negro  adjoin,  where  the  white 
man's  farm  is  cultivated  by  his  own  labor,  where  the 
negro  is  not  to  any  large  extent  a  dependent  class, 
and  where  the  relation  of  master  and  servant  exists 
but  to  a  slight  degree ;  it  is  another  thing  where  the 
negro  exists  in  large  numbers  as  a  working  class 
upon  the  plantation  of  the  white  man.  It  assumes 
still  another  phase  in  the  regions  of  black  and  heavy 
soil,  where  the  white  man  who  owns  the  land  finds  it 
too  unhealthful  to  work  his  own  plantation,  and  the 
large  negro  population  comes  into  personal  relations 
only  with  boss,  overseer,  or  superintendent.  In  our 
mining  regions,  moreover,  where  the  negro  comes 
into  direct  contact  with  the  white  man,  not  as  a  land- 
owner or  overseer,  but  as  a  fellow-laborer,  often  with 
the  foreign  laborer,  we  find  a  different  problem  still. 
The  problem  differs  not  only  from  locality  to  locality, 
but  from  man  to  man.  There  is  a  personal  equation 
as  well  as  a  local  equation. 

Arid  in  addition  to  a  personal  and  a  local  equation 
there  is  a  class  equation.  In  certain  sections  of  the 
South  the  negroes  themselves  are  different  from  those 
in  other  sections.     Those  negroes  of   Virginia  who 


156  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

have  been  reared  in  proximity  to  the  white  popula- 
tion of  the  higher  type,  reflect  in  aspiration,  in 
character,  in  manner,  the  better  qualities  of  their 
environment.  The  negroes  of  other  sections  who  are 
the  descendants  of  those  inferior  slaves  that  were 
"weeded  out"  of  the  better  plantations  and  "sold 
South,"  present  a  far  more  difificult  situation. 

And  the  white  population,  also,  has  its  social  classi- 
fications. Between  the  more  intelligent  negroes  and 
the  representatives  of  the  planter-class  —  the  old  aris- 
tocracy —  there  is  little  if  any  friction.  But  between 
the  negro  of  any  class  and  the  representative  of  the 
"plain  people,"  the  people  whose  energies  are 
re-creating  the  fortunes  of  the  land,  whose  preju- 
dices are  quite  as  vigorous  as  their  industry,  who 
have  never  known  the  negro  at  his  best  and  have  too 
often  seen  him  at  his  worst,  —  between  the  new  negro 
and  the  new  white  man,  there  is  likely  to  be  enmity 
and  there  is  very  sure  to  be  suspicion.  The  Southern 
white  man  also  presents  those  marked  varieties  of 
temperament  and  disposition  which  go  everywhere 
with  a  greater  complexity  and  a  deeper  refinement  of 
social  organization.  He  differs  also  under  the  chang- 
ing and  instructive  forces  of  travel,  of  education,  of 
experience.  From  class  to  class,  from  man  to  man, 
as  well  as  from  place  to  place,  what  has  been  called 
"the  problem  of  the  races"  assumes  a  distinctive 
phase  and  becomes  a  different  problem. 

Dwelling  upon  still  another  aspect  of  our  Southern 
situation,  the  writer  addressed  the  following  words, 
in  March  of  1900,  to  a  representative  audience  in  the 
city  of  Philadelphia :  "  Under  wholly  normal  and 
natural  conditions  our  race  perplexities  at  the  South 


VI  THE  SOUTH   AND   THE  NEGRO  157 

would  have  been  serious  enough.  You  have  found 
them  serious  here.  Those  of  you  who  are  familiar 
with  Du  Bois's  book  ^  on  the  subject  of  '  The  Phila- 
delphia Negro  '  know  the  humiliating  difficulties  of 
the  problem  in  a  city  which  is  so  resourceful  in  its 
educational  and  humanitarian  provisions  that  we,  of 
smaller  and  poorer  communities,  are  wont  to  look 
upon  you  as  just  one  great  organized  compassion. 
If  here  you  have  found  the  task  one  of  such  sadden- 
ing perplexity,  what  will  you  say  of  the  difficulties  of 
this  task  when  presented  under  the  conditions  of 
Southern  life  ?  If  the  negro  in  PJiiJade_lphia  presents 
a  problem  which  you  have  not  solved  in  justice  either 
to  the  negro  or  to  yourselves,  what  would  you  do 
with  him  under  conditions  which  should  multiply  by 
fifty  fold  his  numbers  in  your  midst,  which  should 
multiply  the  burden  of  his  illiteracy  and  should  increase 
his  tendencies  to  indolence ;  under  conditions  which 
should  make  his  freedom  the  legacy  of  a  desolating 
war,  under  changes  which  had  torn  him  from  one 
place  in  the  social  organism  and  had  not  fitted  him 
to  another,  which  had  removed  him  as  a  slave  with- 
out fitting  him  for  freedom  ?  What  would  you__dfl_ 
with  him  under  conditions  which,  through  the  admin- 
istrative policy  of  his  liberators,  had  then  placed  him 
in  the  care  of  those  who,  representing  neither  the 
conscience  of  the  victors  nor  the  dignity  of  the  van- 
quished, befriended  him  solely  to  despoil  his  truest 
friends;  who,  after  using  himjor  the  humiliation  of 
his  master,  left  him  shorn  indeedjof  his  shackles^^  but 

1  "  The  Philadelphia  Negro,  A  Sociological  Study,"  by  W.  E.  Burg- 
hardt  Du  Bois  ;  Philadelphia,  The  American  Academy  of  Political  and 
Social  Science,  1899. 


158  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

shorn  also  of  that  heritage  of  care  which  the  weak 
should  possess  in  the  compassions  of  the  strong  ? 
What  could  you  have  done  with  a  problem,  naturally 
so  difficult,  that  had  been  left  to  you  under  the  con- 
ditions of  military  defeat,  with  its  prostrating  influ- 
ence upon  social  enthusiasm  and  civic  hopefulness ; 
mider-Gonditions  of  economic  depression,  of  industrial 
exhaustion  and  personal  poverty  —  compeUing  the 
jworthier  classes  of  lhe__white  population  into  so 
intense  a  strugg^le  for-xehabilitation  that  the  very 
necessities  of  survival  forced  the  superior  race  partly 
to  ignore  the  weaker;  under  conditions  of  antago- 
nistic legislation  from  an  ahen  but  dominant  party 
government,  and  often  under  the  provocations  of 
harsh  and  self-sufficient  criticism  from  those  who 
judged  where  they  could  not  know,  and  who  advised 
where  they  had  not  suffered  ?  You  may  not  think  as 
I  think,  but  suppose  these  were  the  things  you  did 
think ;  suppose  you  had  not  only  the  negro  in  Phila- 
delphia, but  Philadelphia  and  the  negro  together 
under  such  conditions  as  I  have  named,  conditions 
which  you  yourselves  should  really  view  as  the  great 
masses  of  our  people  have  viewed  our  conditions  at 
the  South.  I  think  you  will  see  that  there  is  to-day 
with  us  not  the  negro  problem  only,  under  its  varied 
personal  and  local  phases,  but  other  problems  with  it, 
and  I  think  you  will  understand  me,  therefore,  if  I 
say  that  when  a  man  attempts  to  discuss  the  negro 
problem  at  the  South,  he  may  begin  with  the  negro, 
but  he  really  touches,  with  however  light  a  hand,  the 
whole  bewildering  problem  of  a  civilization." 

The  difficulties  of  the  situation  are  not  simplified 
by  the  fact  that  this  civilization  is  included  within  a 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND  THE  NEGRO  159 

larger  civilization  and  a  more  democratic  order,  and 
that  every  problem  of  the  one  necessarily  emerges 
under  its  varying  political  and  industrial  forms  as  a 
problem  of  the  other.  It  is  still  true  that  there  is 
one  sense  in  which  the  problem  itself  is  profoundly 
sectional.  Locally  as  well  as  historically  the  negro 
question  is  a  Southern  question.  Seven-eighths  of 
the^negro  population  are  in JtheSpyth,  and  they  are 
in  the  South  to  stay.  There  will  be  occasional  move- 
ments northward.  Long-established  negro  "  colonies" 
in  cities  like  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Cincinnati 
will  continue  to  increase  in  numbers.  But  these  peo- 
ple, in  the  mass,  and  because  of  the  silent,  unyielding 
sway  of  climatic  and  industrial  forces,  will  remain  south 
of  an  imaginary  line  connecting  the  cities  of  Washing- 
ton and  St.  Louis.  Even  within  this  Southern  terri- 
tory, it  is  evident  that  it  is  the  lower  South,  the  South 
within  the  South,  which  is  receiving  the  largest  rela- 
tive increase  in  the  number  of  its  negroes. 

And  yet,  while  this  is  true,  it  is  also  true  that  there 
are  two  aspects  of  our  question  under  which  it  must 
assume  a  national  form.  Although  the  larger  pro- 
portion of  the  black  population  lies  within  the  South, 
the  actual  number  of  negroes  at  the  North  is  steadily 
increasing ;  and  the  national  distribution  of  the  negro 
as  a  factor  of  population  involves  the  national 
distribution  of  the  negro  as  a  problem  of  American 
civilization.^     From  being  a  problem  which  was  once 

1  The  city  in  the  United  States  having  the  largest  number  of  negroes 
in  1900  was  Washington,  D.C.,  with  86,702  ;  then  follow  Baltimore 
(79,258),  New  Orleans  (77,714),  Philadelphia  (62,613),  and  New 
York  (60,666).  It  will  be  noted  that  only  one  city  south  of  Washing- 
ton has  as  large  a  negro  population  as  the  city  of  New  York. 


i6o  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

accorded  a  wrong  solution  in  one  section  of  our  coun- 
try, it  has  become,  for  every  section  of  our  country,  a 
problem  which  has  received  no  adequate  solution 
whatever. 

The  issues  presented  by  the  negro  in  American  life 
are  national,  however,  in  no  merely  geographical  sense. 
They  are  national  because  of  the  principles,  because 
of  the  industrial  and  political  assumptions,  which  they 
involve.  The  national  welfare  is  the  larger  context 
of  every  local  problem  ;  and  while  the  negro  question 
finds  its  locality  in  the  South,  it  must  find  its  ultimate 
adjustment— -if  it  ever  receives  adjustment  —  in  the 
"conscience,  the  wisdom,  the  knowledge,  the  patience, 
the  courage  of  the  Nation.  The  problem  under  its 
older  form  was  created  by  the  complicity  of  the 
Nation.  The  problem  under  its  later  forms  has  been 
created  by  the  deliberate  enactments  of  the  Nation. 
The  Nation,  including  the  South,  the  West,  the  East, 
the  North,  cannot  be  permitted  to  evade  responsi- 
bilities which  it  has  always  been  zealous  to  accept 
but  which  it  has  not  always  been  so  zealous  to  dis- 
charge. Least  of  all  can  the  South  be  a  party  to 
that  evasion.  If  national  action  could  be  really  in- 
spired by  the  wholesome  and  constructive  spirit  of  a 
truly  national  policy,  could  be  pursued  really  in  the 
interest  of  the  whole  people,  rather  than  in  the  in- 
terest of  sectional  bitterness  or  partisan  advantage, 
it  would  bring  significant  and  lasting  benefits.  Too 
often,  however,_tlie  4)ohcies  which  have  been  pro- 
posed in  the  Nation's  name  have  been  so  pursued 
as  to  bring  the  negro  into  American  Ufe  as  an  issue 
of  sectionalism  rather  than  as  an  occasion  for  nation- 
ality,—  nationality  of  temper,  of  sympathy,  of  pur- 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE   NEGRO  i6l 

pose.  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that  government  by 
parties  is  inevitable.  There  are  some  crimes  of  which 
even  parties  ought  to  be  incapable. 

I  have  not  hesitated  to  speak  of  the  presence  of 
the  negro  in  American  life  as  a  "  problem."  We 
have  been  told  that  the  negro  should  be  regarded  not 
as  a  problem  but  as  a  man.  There  is  truth  in  the 
suggestion.  And  yet  out  of  this  truth  there  arises 
the  problem  —  he  is  a  man,  and  yet  a,  man  unlike^ 
in  history  and  in  racial  character,  the  men  about  him. 
Every  man,  white  or  black,  presents  a  problem.  The 
problem  increases  in  perplexity  when  to  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  individual  are  added  the  characteristics 
which  distinguish  and  differentiate  the  group —  social, 
national,  or  racial  —  with  which  he  is  associated. 
When  this  group  is  brought  into  contact  with  another 
group,  or  with  other  groups,  the  elements  of  com- 
plexity are  increased.  The  problem  grows.  Russia's 
-former  serfs  —  struggling  out  of  bondage  in  one  forrnl 
and  hardly  attaining  liberty  in  any  form  —  present  a 
Russian  problem.  Her  student-bodies  —  struggling 
for  the  broadest  realities  of  democracy  under  auto- 
cratic conditions  —  present  another  problem.  Where 
the  anomalous  conditions  are  created  not  from  within 
but  by  forces  and  elements  from  without,  the  problem 
is  greater  still.  The  Russian  in  China  is  a  Chinese 
problem.  The  Jew  in  Russia  is  a  Russian  problem. 
The  white  man  in  Africa  is  an  African  problem. 
The  African  in  America  is,  and  will  be  for  centuries, 
one  of  the  problems  of  American  life. 

Nor  cgii.jw£-sa-y  that  the  negro  presents  not  a  prob- 
lem but  a  task.  That  would  be  to  assume  that  the 
supreme  need  is  the  need  of  resources,  material  and 

M 


1 62  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

moral,  and  that  all  could  be  well  adjusted  if  there 
were  sufficient  power  and  sufficient  patience.  These, 
undoubtedly,  are  great  needs.  The  task  presents, 
however,  not  only  the  aspects  of  moral  and  physical 
difficulty  but  of  intellectual  confusion.  If  we  all 
knew  what  to  do  and  there  were  not  the  strength  or 
the  will  to  do  it,  the  negro  would  present  a  task.  Be- 
cause there  is  much  strength  and  some  will,  and  yet 
because  no  ten  men  have  ever  yet  agreed  as  to  what 
we  should  all  do,  the  negro  presents  something  more 
than  a  task ;  he  presents  a  problem. 

Fortunately,  there  is  increasing  agreement  upon  the 
programme  presented  by  such  institutions  as  Hamp- 
ton and  Tuskegee.  And  yet  this  programme  is  rightly 
and  obviously  but  a  programme  of  beginnings.  That 
is  its  supreme  success  ;  and  that  is  its  limitation.  What 
lies  beyond  ?  What,  politically  and  socially,  is  the 
terminus  ad  quern,  the  far-on  result,  of  such  wise  and 
righteousjtraining.^  Before  that  question  men  divide. 
It  is  altogether  probable  that  large  numbers  of  men, 
white  and  black.  North  and  South,  have  united  upon 
the  support  of  this  programme  for  wholly  dissimilar  or 
for  antagonistic  reasons.  All  are  agreed  that  this  is 
the  next  step.  The  next  step  to  what .-'  Before  that 
question  will  rise  all  the  ancient  and  lurid  spectres 
of  misapprehension  and  suspicion. 

II 

As  the  negro  problem  has  been  presented  at  the 
North  and  in  the  South  —  its  more  especial  local 
home  —  it  has  apparently  assumed,  within  the  past 
five  years,  certain  more  acute  and  more  serious  forms. 


VI  THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEGRO  163 

To  these  unfortunate  developments  the  whole  situation 
has  contributed,  from  the  side  of  the  negro  and  from 
the  side  of  the  white  man.  And  yet,  while  it  is  true 
that  there  are  grave  evidences  of  loss,  it  is  equally 
true  that  there  are  marked  evidences  of  gain.  Prog- 
ress has  been  coincident  with  retrogression.  Many 
of  our  difficulties  are  due  t©  the  delinquencies  of  the 
negro;  quite  as  many,  however,  are  due  to  his  ad- 
vancement. Nor  do  the  difficulties  of  the  problem 
lie  wholly  with  the  negro.  At  the  South,  the  pro- 
cesses of  social  evolution  which  were  accentuated,  if 
not  inaugurated,  by  the  issue  of  the  Civil  War  had 
their  profound  effect  upon  the  life  of  the  negro 
masses.  They  have  also  involved,  however,  the  life 
of  the  white  masses,  and  have  set  to  work  within 
it  certain  forces  of  transformation  which,  for  many 
years,  must  bear  with  insistent  pressure  upon  the 
fortunes  both  of  the  negro  and  of  the  South.  Let 
uF  turn,  first  of  all,  to  the  consideration  of  some  of 
the  s^&ial  changes  wrought  in  the  masses  of  negro 
life  by  tTieissue  of  emancipation. 
^^ — Slavery  was  nothing  if  not  a  system  of  restraint. 
This  restraint  was  sometimes  expressed  in  ignoble 
and  brutal  forms.  It  was  sometimes  expressed  in 
the  forms  of  a  kindly  and  not  ungenerous  paternal- 
ism. But,  good  or  bad,  it  held  the  race  in  check. 
It  imposed  its  traditional  limitations,  it  exercised  a 
directive  and  restrictive  oversight.  It  was  bondage. 
This^Jbondagg_fixedL_instinctively,  a  limit  beyond 
which  the  negro  must  not  ascend ;  it  fixed  a  limit  be- 
low which  the  negro  must  not  fall.  It  operated  in 
both  directions  as  a  check.  To  the  negro  who  was 
iifclined  to  rise  into  the  larger  liberties  of  thought  and 


l64  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

knowledge  it  opposed — it  was  compelled  to  oppose 
—  its  barriers.  To  the  negro  who  was  inclined  to 
descend  into  the  debilities  of  inefficiency  and  crime  it 
also  opposed  —  it  was  compelled  to  oppose  —  its  bar- 
riers. As  the  jrace  had  come  to  these  shores  from  a 
land  of  pitiless  barbarism^  the  number  of  negroes 
who  tended  to  fall  below  the  standard^oj  slavery  ,was 
probably  very  much  greater  than  the  number  who 
tended  to  rise  aboye  it.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that 
for  some  generations  the  net  result  of  slavery  was 
not,  in  its  practical  operation,  a  disadvantage  to  the 
masses  of  negro  life.  And  yet  the  deep  cry  of  the 
few  who  would  aspire  will  always  possess  —  in  God's 
heart  and  in  the  heart  of  all  our  race  —  a  more  im- 
perious validity  than  the  dark  longing  of  the  many 
who  would  descend. 

U^nQiLjthe  two  tqndencies  of  the  negro  thus  held 
in  check  the  effecL^of^emancipation  must  be  evident. 
Restraint  withdrawn,  negro  life  is  released  in  two 
directions  —  the  smaller  number  of  better  negroes  is 
permitted  to  rise,  and  many  of  them  do  rise;  the 
larger  number  of  weaker  negroes  is  permitted  to  fall, 
and  most  of  them  do  fall.     It  was  inevitable. 

The  South,  the  country  as  a  whole,  is  confronted, 
therefore,  with  an  upward  and  a  downward  tendency. 
We  are  in  the  presence  of  two  different,  two  oppos- 
ing movements  —  the  one  serving  at  many  points  and 
in  many  ways  to  check  the  other,  but  each  distinct 
and  each  representing  the  social  momentum  of 
natural  and  spontaneous  forces.  The  masses  qf^the 
race,  released  from  the  restraint  which  slavery  ink 
posed,  and  isolated,  through  the  pressure  of  ^oHtical_ 
exigenciej^^rom_thesympathetic  guidance  of  the  bet- 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE   NEGRO  165 

ter  South,  have  shown  many  of  the  tendencies  of 
moral  and  physical  reversion.  At  certain  points 
within  the  South,  especially  at  points  where  the  white 
population  has  represented  the  highest  average  of 
culture  and  character,  these  tendencies  have  been 
arrested.  But  it  was  to  have  been  expected  that, 
upon  the  whole,  the  masses  of  the  negroes  would  first 
become  worse  before  becoming  better. 

And  yet  the  process  upward  —  although  the  story 
of  a  smaller  number  —  must  be  borne  clearly  and 
steadily  in  mind.  The  failure  of  great  masses  of 
men  —  in  the  total  life  of  any  race  —  must  not  ob- 
scure the  achievements  of  the  few.  Indeed,  to  the 
historian  of  the  great  ventures  and  experiments  of 
civilization,  the  achievements  of  the  few  are  of  more 
significance  than  the  failures  of  the  many.  For 
achievement  —  even  though  upon  a  small  scale  —  is 
a  demonstration  of  possibilities.  It  gives  a  starting- 
point  for  constructive  theories  and  policies ;  it  gives 
authority  to  anticipation. 

It  is  no  small  thing  that  the  illiteracy  of  the  negro 
males  of  voting  age  has  been  reduced  in  the  South- 
ern States  from  88  per  cent  in  1870  to  52  per  cent 
in  1900 ;  and  yet  it  is  only  when  we  turn  to  the  more 
intimate  victories,  here  and  there,  of  individual  men 
and  women  that  we  get  the  full  measure  of  the 
negro's  promise.  Nor  would  I  be  disposed  to  seek 
that  promise  in  the  rare  and  exceptional  attainments 
of  the  men  of  genius.  Neither  in  the  marked  reduc- 
tion of  the  illiteracy  of  the  masses  nor  in  the  marked 
distinction  of  such  artists  as  Tanner  or  Dunbar  or 
such  leaders  as  Washington,  Grant,  and  Walker  can 
we  seek  the  sure  evidences  of  a  people's  essential 


i66  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

progress.  All  promise  and  all  attainment  are  worth 
while,  but  the  only  adequate  measure  of  social  effi- 
ciency and  the  only  ultimate  test  of  essential  racial 
progress  lies  in  the  capacity  to  create  the  home ;  and 
it  is  in  the  successful  achievement  of  the  idea  and  the 
institution  of  the  family,  of  the  family  as  accepted 
and  honored  under  the  conditions  of  Western  civiliza- 
tion, that  we  are  to  seek  the  real  criterion  of  negro 
progress. 

For  the  very  reason  that  the  test  is  so  severe  —  and 
yet  so  instinctively  American  —  the  weaknesses  of 
the  race  will  seem  conspicuous  and  formidable. 
American  society,  as  a  whole,  stands  not  unscathed 
in  the  white  light  of  its  own  ideal.  The  heritage  of 
the  negro  —  his  heritage  from  slavery  and  from  the 
darker  age  which  preceded  slavery  —  has  given  him 
but  small  equipment  for  the  achievement  of  this  task. 
And  yet  the  negro  home  exists.  That  jts  existence 
is,  in  many  cases,  but  a  naifve  pretence,,  that  negro 
life  often  proceeds  upon  its  way  with  a  disregard  — 
partly:  \rrLmora],  J^)ari^y^ j^nn-mnr^i} — of  our  accepted 
marital  conditions,  is  evident  enough.  And  yet  those 
who  would  observe  broadly  and  closely  will  find  a 
patiently  and  persistently  increasing  number  of  true 
faniilies— and  real  homes,  a  number  far^Tn  excess  of 
the  popular  estimate,  homes  in  which  with  intelli- 
gence, probity,  industry,  and  an  admirable  simplicity, 
the  man  and  the  woman  are  creating  our  fundamental 
institution.  Scores  of  such  homes,  in  some  cases 
hundreds,  exist  in  numbers  of  our  American  com- 
munities —  exist  for  those  who  will  try  to  find  them 
and  will  try,  sympathetically,  to  know  them.  But  one 
of  the  tragic  elements  of  our  situation  lies  in  the  fact 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE   NEGRO  167 

that  of  this  most  honorable  and  most  hopeful  aspect 
of  negro  life  the  white  community,  North  or  South, 
knows  practically  nothing.  Of  the  destructive  fac- 
tors in  negro  life  the  white  community  hears  to  the 
uttermost,  hears  through  the  press  and  police  court ; 
of  the  constructive  factors  of  negro  progress  —  the 
negro  school,  the  saner  negro  church,  the  negro  home 
— the  white  community  is  in  ignorance.  Until  it  does 
know  this  aspect  of  our  negro  problem  it  may  know 
more  or  less  accurately  many  things  about  the  negro ; 
but  it  cannot  kno>Xr  the  negro. 

The  white  rnan,  North  as  well  as  South,  feels  —  and 
feels  wisely  —  that  the  social  barrier  should  remain. 
So  long,  however,  as  it  remains  it  shuts  out  not  only 
the^negro  from  the  -white  man  but  the  white  man  ) 
from  the  negro.  Seeing  the  negro  loafer  on  thej 
streets,  the  negro  man  or  woman  in  domestic  service,] 
the  negro  laborer  in  the  fields,  is  not  seeing  the  negrpf 
It  is  seeing  the  negro  on  one  side.  It  is  seeing  the 
negro  before  achievement  begins,  often  before  achieve- 
ment —  the  achievement  which  the  world  esteems  — 
is  possible.  Knowing  the  white  man  only  under  those 
conditions  would  not  be  knowing  the  white  man. 
Yet  this  side  of  the  negro  is  usually  the  only  side  of 
which  the  white  community  has  direct  and  accurate 
knowledge.  It  is  the  knowledge  of  industrial  con- 
tact, and  of  industrial  contact  upon  its  lower  plane. 
It  is  not  the  knowledge  of  reciprocal  obligations,  of 
social  revelation.  And  at  the  point  where  this  lower 
contact  ceases,  at  the  point  where  the  negro's  real 
efficiency  begins,  and  he  passes  out  of  domestic  ser- 
vice or  unskilled  employment  into  a  larger  world,  the 
white  community  loses  its  personal  and  definite  infer- 


i68  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

mation ;  the  negro  passes  into  the  unknown.  As  the 
negro  attains  progress,  he,  by  the  very  fact  of  prog- 
ress, removes  the  tangible  evidence  of  progress  from 
the  immediate  observation  of  the  white  community. 
Thus  the  composite  idea,  the  social  conception  of  the 
negro  which  is  beginning  to  obtain  among  us,  is  de- 
termined more  largely  by  the  evidences  of  negro 
retrogression  or  negro  stagnation  than  by  the  evi- 
dence, the  real  and  increasing  evidence,  of  negro 
advancement. 

Nor  is  the  inadequacy  of  the  composite  picture  of 
the  negro  due  only  to  the  way  in  which  the  social 
cleavage  between  the  races  imposes  its  limitation 
upon  the  vision  of  the  white  community.  The  in- 
adequacy of  the  picture  is  due  to  subjective  as  well 
as  to  objective  causes.  A  partly  mistaken  concep- 
tion of  the  negro  has  resulted  from  the  fact  that 
the  white  world  does  not  see  the  negro  at  his  best ; 
it  has  also  resulted  from  the  fact  that  the  white  world 
which  now  sees  the  negro  habitually,  which  judges 
him  and  speaks  of  him  most  constantly,  is  not  infre- 
quently the  white  world  at  its  worst.  How  large  a 
number  of  the  white  world,  upon  its  educated  side, 
have  ever  really  seen  the  life  of  a  negro  home,  or  the 
life  of  the  negro  school,  or  the  life  of  the  saner  negro 
church .''  The  conception  of  the  old-time  darky  is  a 
national  heritage,  a  heritage  more  sacred  to  the  South 
than  those  outside  the  South  can  always  understand. 
That  conception,  however,  as  it  lives  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  our  domestic  and  literary  life,  is  due  not  to 
one  factor  only  but  to  two.  It  was  the  result,  like 
all  conceptions,  of  the  thing  seen  and  the  seeing  eye. 
It  was  not  due  alone  to  the  negro  of  our  older  age. 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE  NEGRO  169 

It  was  due  to  the  eye  which  looked  upon  him,  which 
judged  broadly  his  qualities  of  character,  which 
had  regard  to  his  fidelities,  and  which  understood, 
with  the  humor,  the  patience,  the  magnanimity  of  an 
educated  class,  the  occasions  of  the  negro's  failure. 
The  conception  of  the  old-time  darky  is  thus  a 
double  contribution,  the  contribution  of  the  better 
negro  as  known  and  interpreted  to  us  through  the 
better  heart  of  the  older  South. 

But  the  mind  of  that  older  South  no  longer  domi- 
nates the  visual  habits,  the  racial  prepossessions  of 
Southern  life.  The  political-and  industrial  reorgani- 
zation of  the  South  has  formed  a  new  democracy,  a 
democracy  which  has  brought  into  its  fellowship  the 
neglected  masses  oL_th£jadiitepQpiilation,_which  has 
been  forced  to  seek  its  basis  of  organization  upon  the 
one  ground  of  the  unity  of  race  ;  and  within  this  larger 
white  world  —  alert,  vigorous,  confident,  assertive  — 
many  of  the  old  attitudes  of  spirit  have  passed  away. 
An  educated  minority  may  transfer  to  the  crude  mul- 
titudes of  a  new  order  a  sense  of  power,  a  sense  of 
freedom,  a  sense  of  responsibility,  but  not  its  more 
intimate  phases  of  temper,  of  individuality  —  its  ur- 
banities, its  genial  humor,  its  share  in  those  perva- 
sive charities  which  spring  from  a  sense  of  leisure 
and  from  an  assured  consciousness  of  power,  quite  as 
much  as  from  a  fertile  earnestness  of  heart. 

The  old  South  does  last  on  within  the  new,  the  old 
South  with  its_magnanimity  and  its  poise;  and,  here 
and  there,  in  numberless  men  and  women  and  in 
many  establishments  of  city  and  country,  one  may 
still  observe  the  persistence  and  charm  of  that  amaz- 
ing patience  with  which   the   South  has   served  the 


lyo  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

negro  while  the  negro  has  served  the  South.  And 
yet  these  forces  are  no  longer  dominant.  The  new 
world  which  has  resulted  from  our  political  and  in- 
dustrial reorganization  has  brought  into  power  vast 
multitudes  of  the  unlettered  and  the  untrained,  a 
white  population  possessing  all  the  pride,  all  the 
energy,  all  the  assertiveness  of  the  older  order,  with- 
out its  experience  or  its  culture.  It  does  not  always 
rule.  It  has  usually  been  so  wise  and  so  sincere  as  to 
choose  its  leaders  from  the  ranks  of  trained  and  at  least 
educated  men  ;  but  among  these  it  has  usually  chosen 
those  who  were  fitted  to  understand  it  and  to  serve  it 
rather  than  those  who  would  instruct  it.  Have  North- 
ern constituencies  wrought  otherwise .''  But  when  the 
cruder  forces  of  the  South  have  found  themselves  in 
the  possession  of  nobler  leaders,  chosen  by  them  or 
chosen  for  them  by  the  occasional  influence  of  the 
commercial  and  professional  classes,  the  masses  of  the 
people  have  been  quick  to  respond  to  the  appeal  of 
every  free  and  upbuilding  purpose  ;  and  here  lies  the 
promise  of  the  future.  As  yet,  however,  it  is  too  soon 
to  expect  that  the  new  and  untrained  elements  of  the 
white  democracy  will  view  the  negro  otherwise  than 
from  their  own  personal  and  present  and  actual  stand- 
point. In  States  where,  in  many  localities,  more  than 
20  per  cent  of  the  white  men  of  voting  age  are  illiter- 
ate ;  where  the  rural  population  which  can  read  and 
write  does  actually  read  and  write  but  little ;  where 
large  numbers  of  the  people  have  known  nothing 
of  the  slave  except  as  the  representative  of  a  hated 
competitive  labor,  and  where  the  negro  in  freedom 
has  lost  many  of  the  virtues  of  his  bondage,  it  is  im- 
possible to  suppose  that  ignorant  men  will  judge  the 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE  NEGRO  171 

negro,  or  any  other  factor  of  experience,  otherwise 
than  ignorantly.  Even  where  knowledge  is  greater 
and  experience  broader,  the  popular  conception  of 
the  negro  is  largely  determined  by  the  impressions 
that  arise  among  the  ignorant.  Almost  every  family 
makes,  in  thought  and  expression,  an  "  honorable  ex- 
ception "  of  the  servants  of  its  own  household,  the 
negroes  it  really  knows ;  but  the  collective  concep- 
tion, the  composite  picture  of  the  negro,  is  too  often 
the  negro  as  interpreted  through  the  medium  of  an  un- 
trained public  opinion,  an  opinion  sometimes  voiced  in 
the  rant  of  the  political  hustings,  in  sensational  press 
reports,  in  the  rumors  of  the  street.  The  mind  of 
the  white  world,  as  it  sees  and  judges  the  negro,  is 
thus  not  the  mind  of  the  white  world  at  its  best.  It 
is  a  mind  now  influenced  by  the  presence  within  it 
in  abnormal  proportions,  of  unsympathetic  and  untu- 
tored forces  ;  forces  which  are  gaining  daily,  however, 
in  both  sympathy  and  training ;  forces  which  may 
well  be  the  occasion,  therefore,  of  no  inconsiderate 
pessimism  but  of  a  reasonable  and  wholesome  faith, 
a  faith  which  the  true  citizen  of  a  democracy  gives, 
and  is  bound  to  give,  to  every  social  possibility  of  his 
country's  life. 

Ill 

We  may  be  tempted  to  say,  therefore,  that  the 
kindlier  conception  of  the  old-time  negro  resulted 
from  the  fact  that  the  white  world  at  its  best  was 
looking  upon  the  negro  at  his  best ;  the  harsher  con- 
ception of  the  present  negro  resulting  from  the  fact 
that  a  white  world  which  is  not  at  its  best  is  looking 
upon   the   negro   at   his  worst.     The   generalization 


172  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

thus  expressed  may  be  too  clearly  drawn,  and  yet 
it  is  sufficiently  evident  that  just  at  this  period  in  the 
history  of  the  South  the  two  races  have  entered 
into  new  conditions,  and  that  under  these  conditions 
their  relations  to  each  other  are  at  many  points  the 
relations  of  disadvantage.  The  necessary  social 
cleavage  between  the  races  forces  the  negro  —  as  he 
rises  —  to  rise  out  of  the  familiar  view  of  the  white 
community.  The  race  secures  little  credit  for  its 
actual,  its  most  significant,  gains.  The  white  world 
has  been  influenced  both  in  thought  and  in  action, 
not  merely  by  the  fact  that  negro  progress  has  been 
obscured,  but  by  the  fact  that  its  own  vision  has  been 
affected  by  the  rapid  and  overwhelming  rise  of  a 
great  class  —  possessing  the  hereditary  antipathies 
of  race,  accentuated  by  the  economic  antipathies  of 
all  free  labor  toward  the  labor  of  the  slave.  To  the 
resulting  conception  of  negro  life,  to  the  inadequacy 
of  this  composite  picture  of  negro  experience,  —  limi- 
tations due  to  the  thing  seen  and  to  the  seeing  eye, 
—  we  may  attribute  some  of  the  serious  signs  of  popu- 
lar exasperation,  and  many  of  the  more  recent  evi- 
dences of  racial  friction. 

That  these  evidences  have  not  been  confined  to  the 
Southern  States  is  now  one  of  the  commonplaces  of 
current  observation.  And  where  racial  irritation  has 
arisen  at  the  North,  it  has  been  due  largely  to  the  same 
causes,  to  the  popular  ignorance  of  the  better  phases 
of  negro  life,  and  to  the  preponderance,  in  many  of 
our  American  cities,  of  uncontrolled  and  "  difficult " 
human  masses.  Yet  there  is  present  there  another 
factor  which  is  also  present  in  the  South,  and 
which  contributes  its   sinister   and   baffling   element 


VI  THE  SOUTH   AND  THE  NEGRO  173 

to  the  composite  picture  upon  which  I  have  just 
dwelt.  This  factor  is  the  "criminal"  negro;  numeri- 
cally not  a  large  proportion  of  the  race,  but  as  a 
factor  of  disturbance  one  of  the  baneful  as  well  as 
one  of  the  most  formidable  of  social  forces.^  The 
number  of  such  negroes  is  relatively  small,  and  yet 
it  has  assumed  a  morbid  and  unfortunate  importance. 
To  this  importance  three  influences  have  contributed. 
First,  the  distinctively  criminal  negro  is  often 
guilty  of  unusual  and  abnormal  crimes.  He  is  asso- 
ciated in  the  public  mind  with  one  crime,  particu- 
larly, which  is  unspeakable  in  its  brutality  and 
infamy.  It  is  true  that  this  crime  has  sometimes 
been  charged  against  the  innocent ;  that  is  true  of  all 
crimes.  It  is  also  true  —  as  has  been  suggested  — 
that  the  number  of  such  crimes  is  relatively  small ; 
and  yet  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that,  in  order  to 
shield  the  victim,  the  suppression  of  the  news  of  this 
crime  is  often  as  significant  as  its  exaggeration.  But 
the  fact  that  the  criminals  of  this  class  are  so  few  in 
number,  should  make  the  attitude  of  the  public  mind 
in  dealing  with  them  a  task  of  simplicity  and  ease. 
And  yet,  because  of  the  deep  forces  of  inter-racial 
suspicion,  a  crime  which  should  be  the  very  last 
crime  to  present  any  other  than  an  essential  human 

^  Negro  crime  seems  to  be  proportionately  greater  at  the  North 
than  at  the  South  —  due  probably  to  the  fact  that  at  the  North  the 
negro  is  found  under  the  conditions  of  the  city,  while  at  the  South  he 
lives  chiefly  under  the  simpler  and  more  wholesome  conditions  of  the 
country.  The  percentage  of  crime  is,  in  both  sections,  much  larger  for 
the  negro  than  for  the  white  population,  and  the  statement  of  the  text 
as  to  the  small  proportion  of  criminal  negroes  refers  only  to  the  degen- 
erate roving  type,  peculiarly  irresponsible,  and  guilty  of  the  more  serious 
offences. 


174  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

issue  between  good  and  evil,  has  been  made  one  of 
the  most  complex  and  difficult  of  "questions,"  the 
occasion  for  some  of  the  most  irreducible  points 
in  the  discussion  of  racial  issues.  I  think  it  must 
be  fairly  said  that  the  difficulties  of  the  situation  are 
chargeable  to  false  conditions  in  the  public  opinion 
of  both  races.  Negro  opinion,  organized  and  unor- 
ganized, has  seemed  to  be  too  protective ;  white 
opinion  has  too  often  been  lawlessly  retributive. 

That  negro  opinion,  unorganized  and  uninstructed, 
should  be  inclined  to  protect  even  the  more  degraded 
criminal  may  be  easily  explained  though  not  excused. 
A  weaker  race  constantly  subjected- to  indiscriminate 
attack  is  likely  to  undertake  an  indiscriminate  defence. 
The  very  intensity  of  external  criticism  produces,  in  an 
ignorant  and  untrained  human  mass,  a  morbid  and 
exaggerated  solidarity.  It  is  the  blind  moving  of  the 
instinct  of  self-protection.  The  race,  however  mis- 
takenly, feels  that  it  must  "stand  together."  A  dis- 
position upon  the  part  of  the  white  world  —  the 
stronger  race  —  to  judge  the  negro  with  firm  but 
clear  discrimination  and  to  administer  exact  justice 
under  the  law  would  probably  result  in  a  gradual  but 
effective  counter  movement  within  the  negro  masses, 
a  movement  to  yield  the  guilty  up  to  the  processes  of 
trial.  It  is  not,  however,  to  the  interest  of  the  negro 
that  this  movement  should  await  the  arrival  of  millen- 
nial conditions  among  the  white  race,  and  that  the 
development  of  a  firmer  attitude  toward  negro  crime 
should  be  delayed  until  the  arrival  of  juster  class 
conceptions.  The  negro  often  assumes  that  he  alone 
is  subjected  to  the  prejudices  of  class,  whereas  almost 
every  element  of  society  is  compelled  to  face  them 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND  THE  NEGRO  175 

and  to  bear  with  them.  The  Jew  has  confronted 
them  for  centuries,  in  America  the  German  faces  them 
among  the  Irish,  the  Irishman  faces  them  among  the 
Germans,  the  Itahan  meets  them  at  every  point,  and 
—  long  after  national  idiosyncrasies  have  been 
effaced  — the  poor  man  encounters  them  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  rich  -man,  the  rich  man  confronts  them 
in  the  jury  composed  of  poor  men. 

It  is  in  the  negro's  own  interest  that  the  negro 
criminal  should  receive  the  penalty  of  his  crime,  for 
the  protection  of  the  criminal  means  the  demoraliza- 
tion of  every  social  standard.  In  rural  sections  of 
our  country  there  is  often  the  fear  that  the  accused  — 
if  surrendered  —  will  be  ruthlessly  punished  without 
trial ;  but  the  tendency  among  the  negro  masses  to 
protect  the  criminal  is  also  operative  in  the  cities  — 
even  in  cities  like  New  York  or  Boston  or  Phila- 
delphia—  where  there  is  every  assurance  that  trial 
will  be  accorded. 

To  negro  opinion,  as  expressed  in  the  formal 
declarations  of  representative  assemblies,  we  must 
naturally  look  for  a  definite  quality  of  leadership. 
Yet  these  declarations  have  left  much  to  be  desired. 
The  denunciations  of  wrong  usually  place  the  word 
"  alleged "  before  all  direct  reference  to  serious  of- 
fences, and  the  deprecations  of  "alleged"  crime  are 
usually  coupled  with  conspicuous  counter  charges 
against  the  similar  crimes  of  white  men.  The  domi- 
nant note,  even  to  sympathetic  observers,  has  seemed 
defensive,  exculpatory,  rather  than  decisively  cor- 
rective ;  an  appeal  to  the  world  rather  than  an  honest, 
wholesome  word  at  home.  More  recently  these  ex- 
pressions   have    seemed   to   take  a  better  tone,  and 


176  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

under  the  rapidly  broadening  influence  of  the  wiser 
and  stronger  negro  leaders,  I  believe  we  shall  soon 
find  that  the  organized  opinion  of  the  race  will 
reflect  the  standards  of  a  sympathetic  but  effective 
self-correction. 

And  how  has  the  white  race  —  in  its  knowledge 
and  pride  and  power  —  dealt  with  the  problem  of  the 
negro  criminal .-'  Surely,  not  too  well.  The  average 
criminal,  the  negro  charged  with  commonplace  or 
familiar  crimes,  is  —  in  the  South  at  least  —  at  no 
unusual  disadvantage.  If  brought  before  the  court 
he  is  sometimes  punished  with  undue  severity ;  and 
he  is  sometimes  punished  with  absurd  leniency. 
Petty  crimes  are  often  forgiven  him,  and  in  countless 
instances  "the  small  offences  for  which  white  men  are 
quickly  apprehended  are,  in  the  negro,  habitually 
ignored.  The  world  hears  broadly  and  repeatedly  of 
the  cases  of  injustice,  it  hears  little  of  those  more 
frequent  instances  in  which  the  weaknesses  of  a 
child-race  are  accorded  only  an  amused  indifference 
or  a  patient  tolerance  by  their  stronger  neighbors. 
That  such  an  attitude  has  its  disadvantages  as  well  as 
its  advantages  for  the  negro  need  not  be  forgotten. 

Dealing  with  the  negro  criminal  of  the  baser  type, 
white  opinion  has  too  often  attempted  to  answer  law- 
lessness with  lawlessness  and  ferocity  with  ferocity. 
To  the  popular  mind  the  crimes  against  women  appear 
not  only  as  attacks  upon  the  individual  but  as  attacks 
upon  the  integrity  of  race.  They  are  occasions  both 
of  personal  offence  and  of  race  humiliation.^     They 

1  See  a  paper  by  the  Hon.  Alex  C.  King  of  Atlanta,  Ga.,  in  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Conference  on  the  Race  Problems  of  the  South, 
p.  160 ;  the  B.  F.  Johnson  Publishing  Co.,  Richmond,  Virginia. 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND  THE   NEGRO  177 

are  often  so  intended  by  the  criminal  and  are  often  so 
accepted  by  the  white  community.  The  peculiar 
horror  of  the  crime,  the  morbid  sense  of  race  injury 
which  it  arouses,  the  tendency  of  innocent  negroes  to 
protect  the  guilty,  all  unite  to  produce  a  degree  of 
emotional  tension,  a  condition  of  social  hysteria  which 
few  who  have  not  endured  the  experience  can  under- 
stand. Add  to  the  difficulties  of  the  situation  a  wholly 
inadequate  constabulary  —  inadequate  because  the 
South  is  not  merely  poor  but  so  largely  rural  that 
efficient  police  organization  is  practically  impossible 
—  and  the  conditions  for  the  rise  of  the  mob  are  at 
once  apparent.^ 

The  mob,  so  far  as  it  has  had  a  consciojas  philos- 
ophy, has  attempted  the  justification  of  its  course  upon 
these  grounds :  —  It  has  insisted  that  its  methods  were 
necessary  in  order  to  prevent  the  crime ;  in  order  to 
avoid  the  procrastination  of  the  courts ;  and  in  order 
to  protect  the  victim  of  assault  from  the  ordeal  of 
presenting  testimony  at  the  trial  of  the  offender. 

1  The  inadequacy  of  a  rural  constabulary  has  not  been  sufficiently 
considered  in  accounting  for  the  presence  of  lynch  law  at  the  South. 
That  the  mob  tendencies  are  active  in  many  Eastern  localities  is 
evident  from  the  large  number  of  "  attempted  "  lynchings.  A  score  of 
these  have  been  noted  in  the  limits  of  the  city  of  New  York  within  the 
period  of  a  year.  In  some  cases  the  accused  was  actually  in  the  hands 
of  the  infuriated  crowd.  The  lynching  was  prevented  by  an  efficient 
constabulary.  Given,  however,  the  conditions  of  rural  life  in  our 
Southern  States,  where  farms  are  widely  scattered,  with  poor  roads, 
infrequent  railway  service,  limited  telegraph  facilities,  and  few  large 
centres  of  social  organization,  —  and  the  "  attempted  "  lynching  has 
its  intended  issue.  Within  the  cities  of  the  South  lynchings  have 
been  practically  unknown.  The  cases  of  mob  violence  in  the  cities  of 
such  Northern  States  as  Delaware,  Indiana,  Ohio,  and  Illinois  have 
few,  if  any,  recent  Southern  parallels. 


178  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

It  has  become  increasingly  obvious,  however,  that 
whatever  the  practice  of  lynching  may  or  may  not 
be,  it  is  not  a  remedy.  It  does  not  prevent  crime. 
Through  the  morbid  interests  which  it  arouses,  and 
through  the  publicity  which  it  creates,  it  inflames  to 
th6  utmost  the  power  of  criminal  suggestion  and 
aggravates  all  the  conditions  of  racial  suspicion  and 
antagonism.  The  so-called  "remedy"  has  always 
been  followed  by  new  outbreaks  of  the  disease,  the 
most  atrocious  crimes  coming  at  short  intervals  after 
the  previous  exercise  of  the  mob's  philosophy  of 
"prevention." 

It  is  true  that  the  procrastination  of  the  courts  has 
sometimes  resulted  in  deep  and  pardonable  irritation. 
Where  the  nature  of  the  offence  is  peculiarly  ab- 
horrent, where  every  circumstance  has  rightly  se- 
cured for  the  victim  the  overwhelming  sympathy  of 
the  public,  and  where  the  accused  is  a  friendless 
member  of  a  weaker  race  this  irritation  has  some- 
times passed  into  uncontrollable  exasperation.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  however,  such  procrastination  is  more 
frequent  to  the  popular  imagination  than  to  the  ob- 
server of  real  events.  In  the  presence  of  the  crime 
to  which  reference  is  made,  American  courts  do  not 
impose  delays.  "  The  delay  of  the  courts  "  is  in 
large  measure  a  popular  superstition.  Where  it 
occurs,  it  occurs  not  in  cases  where  the  accused  is 
a  helpless  and  ignorant  member  of  society,  but  where 
the  defence  can  command  those  resources  of  legal 
talent  and  of  technical  procedure  which  are  possible 
only  to  the  rich.  In  the  cases  of  heinous  crime,  the 
American  court,  North  or  South,  is  usually  conscious 
of  its  obligation  to  the  community.       Surely,  if  the 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND  THE   NEGRO  179 

end  be  justice  rather  than  senseless  and  futile 
slaughter,  the  court  is  not  inferior  to  the  mob  as 
the  instrument  of  an  intelligent  social  verdict.  The 
crude  theory  that  "the  people"  may  resume  their 
delegated  powers  has  no  place  in  a  democratic  order. 
The  mob  is  not  "  the  people "  ;  it  is  a  temporary, 
feverish  minority,  possessing  only  an  incidental  co- 
herence, without  a  fixed  identity,  without  continuity 
or  responsibility  —  assuming  the  most  august  pre- 
rogatives of  society.  Every  mob  is,  in  truth,  an 
attack  upon  "  the  people,"  for  it  acts  in  repudiation 
of  those  institutional  forms  which  the  majority  have 
established.  By  its  very  existence  it  announces  its 
violation  of  the  social  compact  and  its  rejection  of 
the  freely  established  forms  of  popular  administra- 
tion ;  by  its  deliberate  anonymity  and  its  immediate 
dissolution  it  confesses  its  irresponsibility  and  de- 
clares that  its  deeds  were  usurpations.  The  only 
real  instruments  of  "the  people"  for  the  administra- 
tion of  social  penalties  are  the  constabulary  and  the 
courts,  and  these  instruments  the  people  have  es- 
tablished in  order  that  one  man  alone,  and  he  the 
humblest,  may  not  be  without  protection  —  if  inno- 
cent —  from  even  the  collective  power  of  the  majority 
itself.  For  the  constabulary  and  for  the  courts, 
promptness  and  decision  are  important.  But  the 
paramount  and  essential  end  of  every  true  judicial 
process  is  not  promptness  but  justice,  is  not  "  ven- 
geance "  — individual  or  social  —  but  the  solemn  and 
decisive  determination  of  innocence  or  guilt.  It  is 
the  business  of  the  court  to  free  the  innocent,  it  is 
its  business  to  set  apart  the  guilty  for  the  penalties  of 
an  outraged  law.     All  reasonable  haste,  all  possible 


I  So  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

diligence  must  be  employed,  but  —  as  has  been  well 
suggested  —  in  our  effort  to  prevent  the  mob  from 
turning  itself  into  a  court,  let  us  not  end  by  turning 
the  court  into  a  mob. 

The  methods  of  the  mob  are  also  defended  upon 
the  ground  that  they  serve  to  protect  the  victim  of 
crime  from  the  ordeal  of  publicly  testifying  in  the 
case.  Many  have  regarded  this  as  the  strongest 
argument  in  the  mob's  behalf.  Yet  when  we  have 
eliminated  the  cases — by  far  the  greater  number  — 
in  which  the  prisoner  of  the  mob  was  not  even 
charged  with  any  crime  against  women,  but  with 
arson  or  robbery  or  attempted  murder ;  and  when 
we  have  eliminated,  among  the  cases  of  assault 
against  women,  the  number  in  which  death  has 
resulted  and  the  victim  is  thus  prevented  from  all 
testimony,  legal  or  extra-legal,  the  number  of  cases 
which  come  within  the  traditional  excuse  is  ex- 
tremely small.  And  even  here,  what  is  the  high 
chivalry  of  the  mob  which  some  would  substitute 
for  the  care  and  protection  of  an  American  court  .^ 
Does  the  mob  permit  the  woman  to  escape  the  ordeal 
of  testimony .-'  Does  it  accomplish  the  very  protec- 
tion which  it  proposes  ?  Not  at  all.  The  judge  has 
authority  to  clear  the  room  of  all  but  the  direct 
parties  to  the  case,  has  the  power  to  spare  the  victim 

—  under  cross-examination  —  from  any  but  the  sim- 
pler and  less  offensive  questions,  has  the  right  and 
would  surely  have  the  will  —  in  the  North  or  South 

—  to  arrange  the  place  for  the  sitting  of  his  court  so 
as  to  provide  effectively  and  considerately  for  the  con- 
ditions of  privacy.  But  under  the  regime  of  the 
mob,  who  is  to  protect  the  victim,  in  the  hour  of 


VI  THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEGRO  i8i 

wretchedness,  from  the  morbid  and  miscellaneous 
crowd  about  the  rural  home  ?  Posses  of  men  are 
scouring  the  surrounding  territory.  Absent  with 
them  are  probably  her  father,  or  her  husband,  or  her 
brothers.  As  each  suspected  negro  is  caught,  he 
must  be  brought  back  for  identification,  and  the 
woman  in  her  season  of  agony  and  humiliation  is 
called  upon,  again  and  again,  to  face  a  different 
prisoner  and  to  pass  upon  the  question  of  his  iden- 
tity. In  the  dim  Hght  of  her  little  room  she  knows, 
and  all  know,  that  error  is  possible.  But  she  is 
forced  to  endure  this  thing  —  and  not  in  such  pri- 
vacy as  the  court  affords,  but  often  in  the  gaze  of 
men  —  guards  of  the  prisoner  —  whom  she  has  never 
before  seen.  And  this  is  all  supposed  to  be  chivalry. 
But  men  who  have  seen  its  crude  devices  do  not  call 
it  so ;  they  regard  it  as  a  stupid,  ignorant,  pitiful 
travesty  of  reserve.  The  crime  of  which  the  prisoner 
is  accused  is  perhaps  the  most  unutterably  infamous 
of  human  wrongs,  and  in  a  vague  way  men  have  felt 
it  to  be  too  personal,  too  domestic,  to  permit  of  for- 
mal rectification.  Beneath  this  deep  feeling  there 
is  a  certain  touch  of  truth.  Nor  is  the  court  a  per- 
fect instrument  for  the  punishment  of  such  a  crime ; 
the  crime  is  wholly  outside  our  normal  thinking  and 
feeling ;  it  is,  whether  committed  by  black  or  white 
men,  from  the  barbaric  or  the  degenerate  elements 
in  our  life ;  it  is  out  of  the  very  pit.  There  can  be 
no  perfect  instrument  for  its  punishment,  but  the 
court  is  the  best  instrument  that  we  have  —  best  for 
the  interests  of  privacy  as  well  as  for  the  interests 
of  justice — and  in  the  defence  of  our  courts  the 
very  validity  of  our  civilization   is   involved.      The 


1 82  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

mob,  as  we  have  seen,  violates  the  very  canons  of 
the  chivalry  which  it  presumes  to  guard ;  it  thrusts 
upon  the  victim  of  the  crime  an  added  martyrdom  of 
publicity  ;  it  increases  by  the  power  of  criminal  sug- 
gestion the  crimes  it  has  undertaken  to  prevent ; 
it  substitutes  the  chance  humor  of  an  irresponsible 
minority  for  the  deliberately  established  processes  of 
the  majority,  and  so  becomes  a  peril  both  to  justice 
and  to  freedom. 

IV 

I  think  it  may  be  fairly  said,  however,  that  the 
relative  number  of  lynchings  is  decreasing  from  year 
to  year.  In  the  South,  especially,  there  is  an  evident 
disposition  upon  the  part  of  the  more  influential  press 
to  accord  to  the  negro  the  measure  of  exact  justice 
before   the  law.^      That  this  ideal  will  be  attained 

1  The  expressions  of  such  journals  as  the  Constitution,  of  Atlanta, 
Ga.,  and  the  Advertiser,  of  Montgomery,  Ala.,  are  noteworthy,  and 
yet  quite  characteristic  of  the  Southern  press. 

Said  the  Constitution  under  date  of  June  27,  1903 :  — 
"  The  time  when  the  lynching  of  a  certain  breed  of  brutes  could  be  winked 
at  because  of  satisfaction  that  punishment  came  to  him  quickly  and  to  the 
uttermost,  has  given  way  to  a  time  when  the  greater  peril  to  society  is  the 
mob  itself  that  does  the  work  of  vengeance.  Against  the  growth  of  that  evil 
the  best  sense  of  the  nation  needs  to  combine  and  enforce  an  adequate 
protection." 

Said  the  Advertiser  under  dates  of  September  16  and  October  6, 
1903 :  — 

"  The  white  race  has  a  duty  which  is  imperative.  It  is  a  duty  which  is 
demanded  by  justice,  by  humanity,  and  by  self-interest.  Ours  is  and  will 
ever  be  the  governing  race.  It  will  elect  the  lawmakers,  make  the  laws,  and 
enforce  them.  That  being  so,  that  principle  of  eternal  justice  which  bids  the 
strong  protect  the  weak,  makes  it  our  duty  to  protect  the  negro  in  all  his 
legal,  industrial,  and  social  rights.  We  should  see  that  he  has  equal  and 
exact  justice  in  the  courts,  that  the  laws  bear  alike  on  the  black  and  the 
white,  that  he  be  paid  for  his  labor  just  as  the  white  man  is  paid,  and  that 
no  advantage  be  taken  of  his  ignorance  and  credulity.  .  .  . 

"  And  the  task  is  a  simple  and  easy  one.      The  courts  and  juries  should 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND  THE  NEGRO  183 

immediately  no  one  can  predict.  So  long  as  any  ele- 
ment of  the  population  is,  as  a  class,  in  a  position  of 
marked  economic  dependence  upon  stronger  factions 
or  classes,  it  will  certainly  suffer — however  unfortu- 
nately or  unjustly  —  from  the  pressure  of  civil  and 
political  prejudice.  The  intelligent  negro  may  well 
ask  of  our  public  opinion  a  larger  measure  of  dis- 
crimination ;  and  yet  he  may  well  lay  the  greater 
stress  upon  his  gains  rather  than  upon  his  losses. 
Certainly  his  gains  will  be  of  small  avail  if  the  con- 
templation of  his  wrongs  shall  supersede  in  his  life 
the  positive  acceptance  and  the  definite  using  of  his 
rights.  The  consciousness  of  grievances  is  not  an 
inspiring  social  asset  for  a  class  or  for  a  race.  There 
need  be  no  surrender  of  essential  principles,  and  yet 
stress  may  well  be  laid,  confidently  and  hopefully, 
upon  the  privileges  that  are  actually  available  for  the 
negro  in  American  life.  Here,  in  the  using  of  the 
positive  liberties  and  advantages  of  education  and  of 
industry,  of  religious  and  political  freedom,  the  negro, 
through  the  acceptance  of  a  programme  of  positive 
progress,  may  enter  into  a  larger  heritage  than  is 
open  to  any  like  number  of  his  race  in  any  quarter 
of  the  world.  Important  are  some  of  the  advantages 
he  has  not ;  but  more  important  are  the  many  advan- 
tages which  he  has. 

Nor  can  it  be  said  that  these  advantages  are  Northern 

know  no  difference  between  whites  and  blacks  when  a  question  of  right  and 
justice  is  up  for  settlement.  The  man  who  employs  a  negro  to  work  for  him 
should  deal  as  fairly  with  him  as  he  would  deal  by  a  white  man.  The  life  of  a 
negro  who  has  done  no  wrong  should  be  as  sacred  as  the  life  of  a  white  man. 
He  is  in  our  power,  politically  and  otherwise,  and  justice,  humanity,  and 
good  policy  unite  in  demanding  for  him  equal  and  e.xact  justice.  Keep  the 
negroes  among  us,  give  them  the  full  protection  of  the  laws,  and  let  them 
have  justice  in  all  things.    That  is  the  solution  of  the  race  question." 


i84  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

rather  than  Southern.  There  are  to-day  almost  nine 
millions  of  negroes  in  the  United  States.  After  thirty 
years  of  freedom,  nearly  eight  millions  of  them  remain 
within  the  borders  of  the  South.  Why  have  they 
remained  .-'  The  broad  and  living  decisions  of  great 
masses  of  men  possess  a  dumb  but  interesting  signifi- 
cance. They  are  never  wholly  irrational  or  senti- 
mental. The  negro  remains  at  the  South  because, 
among  the  primary  and  the  secondary  rewards  of 
honest  life,  he  gets  more  of  the  primary  rewards  at 
the  South  than  at  the  North.  There  is  no  idle  flat- 
tery of  the  South  in  this  declaration  of  the  Principal 
of  Tuskegee :  — 

"It  is  in  the  South  that  the  black  man  finds  an 
open  sesame  in  labor,  industry,  and  business  that  is 
not  surpassed  anywhere.  It  is  here  that  that  form  of 
slavery  which  prevents  a  man  from  selling  his  labor 
to  whom  he  pleases  on  account  of  his  color,  is  almost 
unknown.  We  have  had  slavery  in  the  South,  now 
dead,  that  forced  an  individual  to  labor  without  a 
salary,  but  none  that  compelled  a  man  to  live  in  idle- 
ness while  his  family  starved." 

The  words  are  not  too  strong.^  The  negro  knows 
that  in  the  essential  struggle  for  existence  the  spirit 
of  the  ^outh  has  been  the  spirit  of  kindliness  aiid 
helpfulness.  Nor  is  it  true  that  the  negro  may  there 
perform  only  the  deeds  of  drudgery,  or  those  petty 

1  Referring  to  the  statistics  of  the  United  States  Census  for  1900 
(Vol.  II,  p.  ccvii),  Booker  T.  Washington  says:  "Here  is  the  unique 
fact,  that  from  a  penniless  population  just  out  of  slavery,  372,414 
owners  of  homes  have  emerged,  and  of  these  255,156  are  known  to 
own  their  homes  absolutely  free  of  encumbrance.  In  these  heads  of 
negro  families  lies  the  pledge  of  my  race  to  American  civilization."  — 
See  the  Trades?nan,  Chattanooga,  Tenn.,  January  i,  1904,  p.  99. 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE  NEGRO  185 

offices  that  are  the  badges  of  a  menial  dependence. 
The  negro  at  the  South  is  preacher,  teacher,  physi- 
cian, and  lawyer  ;  he  is  in  the  dry  goods  business,  the 
grocery  business,  the  livery  business,  the  real  estate 
business,  the  wood  and  coal  business ;  as  well  as  in 
the  business  of  running  errands  and  blacking  boots. 
He  is  shoemaker  and  carpenter  and  blacksmith.  He 
is  everywhere  where  there  is  anything  to  do,  and 
if  he  can  do  it  well,  he  is  usually  treated  fairly 
and  paid  for  it  honestly.  Except  in  professional 
capacities,  he  is  employed  by  all,  he  does  business 
with  all.  There  is  just  one  line  drawn,  however, 
and  it  is  perhaps  significant.  In  a  Southern  city, 
with  the  life  of  which  I  am  familiar,  there  is  a 
successful,  respected  negro  man,  with  many  indus- 
trial and  commercial  functions  toward  the  community 
in  which  he  lives.  He  is  a  keeper  of  carriages,  a 
dealer  in  wood  and  coal,  a  butcher,  and  vendor  of 
vegetables,  —  and  an  undertaker.  There  is  one  de- 
partment of  his  varied  establishment  which  has  never 
had  the  monetary  support  of  the  white  population, 
and  which  is  sustained  entirely  by  the  people  of  his 
own  race.  The  white  people  of  the  city  will  buy 
their  supplies  of  him,  will  purchase  his  wood  and  his 
coal,  will  leave  their  horses  in  his  stables,  and  will 
ride  in  his  carriages ;  —  but  he  may  not  bury  their 
dead.  There  is  in  this  simple  incident  a  monograph 
upoiTthe  subject  of  the  negro  in  the  South. 

But  the  South  gives  to  the  negro  something  more 
merciful  than  sentiment  and  something  more  neces- 
sary than  the  unnegotiable  abstractions  of  social  right. 
The  South  gives  to  him  the  best  gift  of  a  civilization 
to  an  individual  —  the   opportunity  to  live   industri- 


1 86  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

oiisly  and  honestly.  As  the  representative  of  the 
negro  race  whom  I  have  already  quoted  has  also  said, 
"  If  the  negro  would  spend  a  dollar  at  the  opera,  he 
will  find  the  fairest  opportunity  at  the  North ;  if  he 
would  earn  the  dollar,  his  fairest  opportunity  is  at  the 
South.  The  opportunity  to  earn  the  dollar  fairly  is 
of  much  more  importance  to  the  negro  just  now  than 
the  opportunity  to  spend  it  at  the  opera."  ^  The  large 
and  imperious  development  of  trades-unionism  at  the 
North  (the  writer  would  not  speak  in  criticism  of 
organized  labor  in  itself)  is  already  eliminating  the 
negro  as  an  industrial  factor.  Du  Bois's  book  on  the 
negro  in  Philadelphia,  to  which  I  have  already  re- 
ferred, is  but  a  rescript  of  the  story  of  his  life  in  every 
community  at  the  East.  Nothing  could  be  more 
searchingly  relentless  than  the  slow,  silent,  pitiless 
operation  of  the  social  and  economic  forces  that  are 
destroying  the  negro,  body  and  soul,  in  the  Northern 
city.  None  knows  it  so  well  as  the  negro  himself. 
The  race-prejudice,  which  Professor  Shaler  of  Har- 
vard has  recently  told  us  is  as  intense  at  the  North  as 
it  is  anywhere  in  the  world,  first  forbids  to  the  negro 
the  membership  of  the  labor  union,  and  then  forbids 
to  the  employer  the  services  of  non-union  labor.     If 

1  It  is  of  some  significance  that  in  1900  there  were  732,362  farms 
operated  by  negroes  in  the  South.  We  find  that  150,000  Southern 
negroes  now  own  their  own  farms,  and  28,000  more  are  recorded  as 
part  owners.  (Twelfth  Census  of  the  U.S.,  Vol.  V,  pp.  xciii,  4,  172.) 
The  value  of  the  property  in  all  the  farms  operated  by  negroes  at  the 
South  was  $469,506,555.  In  more  than  half  the  counties  of  Virginia 
over  70  per  cent  of  the  negro  farmers  are  owners  or  managers,  and  in  33 
counties  of  the  State  the  proportion  is  over  80  per  cent.  —  See  the  inter- 
esting papers  in  the  Southern  Workman,  Hampton,  Va.,  for  October, 
1902;  and  January,  1903.  —  See  also  the  valuable  monograph  by  Carl 
Kelsey,  "The  Negro  Farmer";   Chicago,  111.,  Jennings  and  Pye,  1903. 


VJ  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE  NEGRO  187 

the  employer  turn  wholly  to  the  non-union  men,  he 
finds  that  rather  than  work  beside  the  negro,  these 
usually  throw  down  their  tools  and  walk  out  of  the  door 
of  factory  or  shop.  And  so  the  dreary  tale  proceeds. 
The  negro  at  the  North  can  be  a  waiter  in  hotel  and 
restaurant  (in  some) ;  he  can  be  a  butler  or  footman 
in  club  or  household  (in  some) ;  or  the  haircutter  or 
bootblack  in  the  barber  shop  (in  some);  and  I  say 
"in  some"  because  even  the  more  menial  offices  of 
industry  are  being  slowly  but  gradually  denied  to 
him.  And  what  is  the  opportunity  of  such  an  envi- 
ronment to  the  development  of  self-dependence,  what 
is  the  value  to  his  labor  of  so  inadequate  and  restricted 
a  market  for  the  complex  capacities  and  the  legitimate 
ambitions  of  an  awakening  manhood .-'  And  what 
lies  at  the  background  of  the  man  .-'  What  of  the 
family,  the  wife,  the  mother,  the  children .-'  What 
are  the  possibilities,  there,  of  self-respect,  of  decency, 
of  hope  .-•  what  are  the  possibilities  of  bread  ? 

The  economic  problem  lies  at  the  very  heart  of  the 
social  welfare  of  any  race.  The  possibility  of  honest 
bread  is  the  noblest  possibility  of  a  civilization ;  and 
it  is  the  indispensable  condition  of  thrift,  probity,  and 
truth.  No  people  can  do  what  is  right  or  love  what 
is  good  if  they  cannot  earn  what  they  need.  The 
South  has  sins  for  which  she  must  give  account ;  but 
it  may  be  fairly  said  that  as  yet  the  South  has  no 
problem  so  great,  so  intimately  serious  as  this.  The 
South  has  sometimes  abridged  the  negro's  right  to 
vote,  but  the  South  has  not  yet  abridged  his  right,  in 
any  direction  of  human  interest  or  of  honest  effort,  to 
earn  his  bread.  To  the  negro,  just  now,  the  oppor- 
tunity, by  honest  labor,  to  earn  his  bread  is  very  much 


1 88  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

more  important  than  the  opportunity  to  cast  his  vote. 
The  one  opportunity  is  secondary,  the  other  is  pri- 
mary ;  the  one  is  incidental,  —  the  greater  number  of 
enlightened  peoples  have  Hved  happily  for  centuries 
without  it,  —  the  other  is  elemental,  structural,  indis- 
pensable ;  it  lies  at  the  very  basis  of  life  and  integrity 
—  whether  individual  or  social. 

V 

It  is  not  possible  or  desirable,  however,  to  ignore 
the  pohtical  issues  created  by  the  presence  of  the 
negro  in  our  national  life.  If  the  negro  were  the 
only  factor  to  be  considered,  the  questions  affecting 
his  political  status  might  be  temporarily  postponed. 
But  the  negro  is,  in  some  respects,  the  least  of  the  fac- 
tors involved.  The  political  and  administrative  organ- 
ization of  our  country  is  democratic.  Its  institutional 
assumptions  are  the  assumptions  of  a  free  democracy. 
Before  all  questions  which  touch  the  political  status 
of  any  race  or  class  of  men  there  arises  the  primary 
question  as  to  the  effect  upon  our  country  and  its 
constitution,  upon  its  civic  customs  and  its  habits  of 
thought,  of  the  creation  of  a  serf-class,  a  fixed  non- 
v^ing  population.  Such  a  class  can  be  established 
and  continued  only  through  habitual  disregard  to  all 
the  moral  presumptions  of  our  organic  law ;  and  such 
disregard,  in  its  reactive  influence  upon  those  who 
continue  it,  must  result  in  a  lowering  of  pohtical  stand- 
ards and  a  vitiation  of  civic  fibre,  far  more  disas- 
trous to  the  strong  than  to  the  weak.  Such  practices 
may  begin  with  class  discriminations,  but  these  dis- 
criminations soon  forget  their  class  distinctions ;  white 


VI  THE  SOUTH   AND  THE  NEGRO  189 

men  end   by  using   against  white  men   the   devices 
which  they  began  by  confining   to  black  men  ;  the 
whole  suffrage  becomes  corrupt;  a  corrupt  suffrage 
eliminates  from  political  leadership  the  men  who  are 
too  free  or  too  pure  to  use  it ;  it  becomes  the  basis  of 
control  for  an  ever  degenerating  political  leadership ; 
and  what  began  as  a  denial  of  political  privilege  to 
a  despised  faction  at  the  bottom  results  in  the  con- 
trol at  the  top  of  those  very  elements  of  an  irrespon- 
sible ignorance  which    discrimination  was   intended 
to  eHminate.      The  retrogressive  forces  which  were 
dreaded  in  a  faction  become  enthroned  over  all ;  and 
the  real  mind  and  conscience  of  the  State,  in  attempt- 
ing to  secure  their  freedom  by  protecting  themselves  i 
against  the  ignorant,  jTe_despolled_.gtJtheir  freedom ! 
through  the  very  processes  of  their  self-protection ;  ^ 
are  put,  by  their  own  methods,  in  bondage   to  the  j 
cruder  forces  of  society.  ' 

The  difficulties  of  the  situation  have  been  supremely 
serious,  and  complex  beyond  description.  It  is  obvi- 
ously true  —  as  has  just  been  stated-^ that  a  democ- 
racy cannot  consent  to  the  establishment  of  a 
dependent  class.  And  yet  it  is  equally  obvious  that 
within  a  number  of  our  Southern  States  that  is  pre- 
cisely what  the  negro  is.  He  is  so  not  primarily  as 
the  result  of  political  proscription,  but  simply  because 
he  is  so.  A  race  which,  while  numbering  from  30  to 
50  per  cent  of  the  population,  contributes  but  4  or 
5  per  cent  of  the  direct  taxes  of  the  State,  is  as  yet 
in  an  economic  status  which  does  not  square  with 
those  industrial  assumptions  which  are  as  important 
as  the  political  assumptions  of  a  genuinely  democratic 
order.     The  elementary  contradiction  of  our  situation 


igo  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

lies,  therefore,  just  here  —  m  the  very  presence  within 
our  life  of  the  vast  numbers  of  a  backward  and  essen- 
I  tialLy  unassimilable  people. 
^y /in  the  years  following  the  Civil  War  the  North 
asserted,  sometimes  with  a  ruthless  impatience  and 
often  through  unworthy  instruments,  but  with  the 
sincere  conviction  of  the  masses  of  her  people,  that 
the  actual  political  administration  of  the  Southern 
States  must  be  squared  with  the  democratic  assump- 
tions of  the  Constitution.  And  the  North  was  right. 
The  South  contended,  upon  the  other  hand,  that 
where  the  choice  must  be  made  between  civilization 
and  democracy,  between  public  order  and  a  particular 
form  of  public  order,  between  government  and  a  spe- 
cific conception  of  government,  —  civilization,  order, 
government  are  primary,  and  that  any  forms  or  con- 
ceptions of  them  —  however  sacred  —  must  await  the 
stable  and  efficient  reorganization  of  social  life.  And 
the  South  was  right.  It  was  opportune  for  the  North 
to  declare  that  the  freedman  could  not  protect  him- 
self unless  given  the  ballot  in  the  mass ;  it  was  equally 
opportune  for  the  South  —  with  whole  States  where 
the  negroes  were  a  majority,  with  many  counties 
where  the  number  of  black  men  was  treble  the  num- 
ber of  white  men  —  to  declare  that  the  supreme  ques- 
tion was  not  the  protection  of  the  negro  but  the 
protection  of  society  itself ;  that  white  supremacy,  at 
that  stage  in  the  development  of  the  South,  was 
necessary  to  the  supremacy  of  intelligence,  adminis- 
trative capacity  and  public  order,  and  involved  even 
the  existence  of  those  economic  and  civic  conditions 
upon  which  the  progress  of  the  negro  was  itself  de- 
pendent.    And  here,  also,  the  South  was  right. 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND  THE   NEGRO  191 

The  South  was  right  and  the  North  was  right. 
The  North  was  strong  and  the  South  was  weak. 
The  North  imposed  the  forms  of  democracy.  The 
South  clung  to  the  substance  of  government. 

Yet,  because  the  very  forms  of  government  were 
democratic  and  because  these  forms  of  government 
were  ruthlessly  imposed  by  an  irresistible  and  unsym- 
pathetic party  power,  the  South  in  clinging  to  the 
very  substance  of  civilization  was  compelled  to  main- 
tain a  lie.  Up  to  this  point  the  historian  will  not 
accord  to  her  the  larger  measure  of  blame  for  the 
moral  tragedy  which  followed.  The  effort,  however, 
to  avert  fraud  and  ignorance  at  one  door  admitted 
them  at  another.  The  effort  to  prevent  the  demoral- 
ization of  government  resulted  —  as  has  been  sug- 
gested—  in  the  compromise  of  all  the  safeguards  of 
the  suffrage.  The  ^rowin^  youth,  of  the  SLaulhJbe- 
came  habitually  familiar  with_eYer  lowering  political 
standards,  as  the  subterfuges  which  were  first  em- 
ployed against  the  black  man  came  to  be  employed 
between  white  men  in  the  struggle  of  faction  against 
faction  within  the  party.  The  better  heart  of  the 
South  now  rose  in  protest.  An_un limited  suffrage 
was  impossible,,  but  the  limitation  of  the  suffrage 
must  be  established  not  by  fraud  or  force  but  under 
legal  conditions,  and  must  be  determined  by  a  fixed 
and  equitable  administration. 

Thus  the  deeper  moral  significance  of  the  recent 
constitutional  amendments  of  the  Southern  States 
does  not  lie  in  the  exclusion  of  the  negro.  The 
exclusion  of  the  negro  had  long  since  been  accom- 
plished. It  lies  in  the  emancipation  of  the  white 
man,_an  emancipation  due  to  the  awakening  desire 


192  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

to  abandon  the  established  habits  of  fraud,  and  to 
place  the  elimination  of  the  undesirable  elements 
of  the  suffrage  squarely  and  finally  under  the  terms 
oFiaw.  The  negro  has,  in  the  ultimate  result,  every- 
thing to  gain  from  such  a  course.  Temporarily  he 
must  suffer  the  consequences  of  an  undemocratic 
adjustment  to  democratic  conditions,  an  adjustment 
due  primarily  to  no  wilfulness  of  the  white  man  at 
the  South  and  to  no  apathy  of  the  white  man  at 
the  North,  but  to  the  contradiction  presented  by  his 
presence  in  the  Nation.  There  are  always  disad- 
vantages in  securing  for  any  adjustment  a  legal 
status  through  illegal  means,  and  the  direct  elimi- 
nation of  all  the  undesirable  elements  of  voting  age 
might  have  seemed  a  comparatively  simple  under- 
taking. Had  the  negro  masses  presented  the  only 
illiterate  elements,  that  method  might  have  been  pur- 
sued. But  there  were  two  defective  classes  —  the 
unqualified  negroes  of  voting  age  and  the  unqualified 
white  men.  Both  could  not  be  dropped  at  once.  A 
working  constitution  is  not  an  a  priori  theoretic  crea- 
tion ;  it  must  pass  the  people.  The  unqualified  white 
men  of  voting  age  might  be  eliminated  by  gradual  pro- 
cess, but  they  must  first  be  included  in  the  partnership 
of  reorganization.  Such  a  decision  was  a  political 
X*  necessity.  They  had  been  fused  —  by  their  participa- 
tion in  the  military  struggle  of  the  Confederacy  and  by 
their  growing  participation  in  the  industrial  and  politi- 
cal power  of  the  South  —  into  the  conscious  and 
dominant  life  of  the  State.  Many  of  them  possessed 
large  political  experience  and  political  faculties  of  an 
unusual  order.  Moreover  —  and  we  touch  here  upon 
a  far-reaching  consideration  —  no  amended  Constitu- 


VI  THE  SOUTH  AND  THE  NEGRO  193 

tion,  no  suffrage  reform,  no  legal  status  for  a  saner 
and  purer  political  administration,  was  possible  with- 
out their  votes.  They  held  the  key  to  the  political 
situation  —  with  all  its  moral  and  social  issues  —  and 
they  demanded  terms. 

Terms  were  given  them.^  Under  skilfully  drawn 
provisions  the  mass  of  illiterate  negro  voters  were 
deprived  of  suffrage  and  the  then  voting  white  popu- 
lation —  with  certain  variously  defined  exceptions  — 
was  permitted  to  retain  the  ballot.  Care  was  taken, 
however,  that  all  the  rising  generation  and  all  future 
generations  of  white  voters  should  be  constrained  to 
accept  the  suffrage  test,  a  test  applicable,  therefore, 
after  a  brief  fixed  period,  to  white  and  black  alike. 
Such  is  the  law.^ 

Lest,  however,  its  technical  and  more  strictly  politi- 
cal provisions  should  be  declared  unconstitutional,  its 
practical  administration  is  placed  in  the  charge  of 
boards  of  registrars,  having  a  large  discretionary 
power  in  the  application  of  the  law,  and  thus  —  by  the 

1  In  Alabama  the  Democratic  State  Convention  went  so  far  as  to 
pledge  that  no  white  man  would  be  disfranchised  "  except  for  infa- 
mous crime."  In  criticism  of  this  pledge  the  writer  pointed  out  that 
its  fulfilment  would  leave  the  ballot  in  the  hands  of  all  the  white 
vagrancy,  perjury,  and  bribery  of  the  State  —  as  these  offences  were  not 
then  "  infamous  "  under  the  code  ;  and  would  be  contrary  to  the  per- 
manent interests  of  both  races.  ^  The  Constitutional  Convention,  largely 
at  the  suggestion  of  the  Press  Association  of  Alabama,  practically  ignored 
any  literal  interpretation  of  the  unfortunate  pledge,  and  the  completed 
instrument  did,  in  effect,  result  hi  the  disfranchisement  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  white  voters. 

2  No  attempt  is  here  made  to  distinguish  between  the  suffrage  pro- 
visions of  the  different  States.  A  statement  of  these  provisions  in 
detail,  together  with  a  discussion  of  some  of  the  current  proposals  of 
federal  policy  must  be  reserved  for  a' later  volume. 

o 


194  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap, 

acceptance  or  rejection  of  candidates  for  registration 
—  actually  choosing  and  creating  the  permanent  elec- 
torate of  the  State.  A  system  of  appeals  has  been  pro- 
vided, and  in  a  number  of  test  cases  white  juries  have 
shown  themselves  willing  to  reverse  the  adverse  decision 
of  the  registrars,  and  to  return  a  verdict  in  the  interest 
of  negro  applicants ;  but  the  system  —  as  a  system  — 
is  manifestly  subject  to  grave  abuses.  If  it  be  used 
as  a  responsible  instrument  for  the  fair  and  equitable 
administration  of  the  law,  it  may  prove  an  honorable 
and  effective  way  out  of  an  intolerable  situation. 

The  essential  principles  involved,  apart  from  all 
the  exasperations  of  the  discussion  that  has  gathered 
about  the  National  Amendments  are,  however,  but 
the  elementary  principles  of  experience  itself.  In  an 
open  letter  to  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  Ala- 
bama, they  were  thus  expressed  :  — 

"  Southern  sentiment  will  not  approve  the  disfran- 
chiseme'nt  nf  the,  illiterate  Cnnfedeiatg  S^^ldier.  In  any 
civilization,  there  is  a  deep  and  rightful  regard  for  the 
rnan jwho  has  fought  in  the  armies  of  the  State.  But, 
with  that  exception,  the  State  must  eventually  project 
itself,  and  protect^thejnterests  of  both  races,  by.  the 
just  application  of  the  suffrage  test  to  the  white  and 
black  alike.  The  South  must,  of  course,  secure  the 
X  supremacy^^f  intelligence  and,property.  This  we  shall 
not  secure,  however,  if  we  begin  with  the  bald  dec- 
laration that  the  negro  is  to  be  refused  the  suffrage 
although  he  have  both  intelligence  and  property,  and 
that  the  illiterate  white  man  is  to  be  accorded  the 
suffrage  although  he  have  neither.  Such  a  policy 
would,  upon  its  face,  sustain  the  charge  that  we  are 
not  really  interested  in  the  supremacy  of  intelligence 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE  NEGRO  195 

and  property,  but  solely  in  the  selfish  and  oppressive 
supremacy  of  a  particular  race. 

"  Such  a  course,  through  its  depressing  influence 
upon  the  educational  and  industrial  ambitions  of  the 
negro,  would  but  increase  his  idleness  and  lawless- 
ness, and  work  injustice  to  the  negro  and  to  the  State. 
Take  out  of  his  life  all  incentive  to"  the  franchise,  and 
you  will  partly  destroy  his  interest  in  the  acquisition 
of  knowledge  and  of  property,  because  no  people 
will,  in  the  long  run,  accept  as  a  working  principle  of 
life  the  theory  of  taxation  without  representation.  I 
do  not  think  the  negro  will  riot  or  rebel,  but  I  do 
think  he  will  be  discouraged  in  the  task  of  acquiring 
something  for  the  State  to  tax.  It  is  not  merely  a 
question  of  justice  to  the  negro.  It  is  a  question  of 
enlightened  self-interest.  No  State  can  live  and 
thrive  under  the  incubus  of  an  unambitious,  unedu- 
cated, unindustrious,  and  non-property-holding  popu- 
lation. Put  the  privilege  of  suffrage  among  the  prizes 
of  legitimate  ambition,  and  you  have  blessed  both  the 
negro  and  the  State. 

"  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  accept  the  administra- 
tion of  an  educational  and  property  test  which  is  to 
enfranchise  the  negro  on  his  acceptance  of  its  provi- 
sions, and  is  to  enfranchise  the  white  man  whether  he 
accepts  them  or  not,  we  shall  have  adopted  a  measure 
which  will  be  an  injustice  to  the  white  citizenship  of 
the  South.  It  will  be  an  injustice  to  the  white  man 
for  the  reason  that  it  places  for  the  negro  a  premium 
upon  knowledge  and  property  —  makes  for  him  a 
broader  incentive  to  the  acquisition  of  an  education  and 
a  home,  leaves  the  white  boy  without  such  incentive, 
makes  the  ballot  as  cheap  in  his  hands  as  ignorance 


196  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

and  idleness,  and  through  indifference  to  the  God- 
given  relation  between  fitness  and  reward,  tempts  the 
race  which  is  supreme  to  base  its  supremacy  more 
and  more  upon  force  rather  than  upon  merit. 

"  No  one  shall  justly  accuse  me  of  wanting  to  put 
the  negro  over  the  white  man.  If  anything,  however, 
could  bring  about  that  impossible  result,  it  would  be 
the  imposition  of  a  suffrage  test  for  the  negro  without 
the  application  of  the  same  test  to  the  white  man. 
Such  action  will  increase  for  the  negro  the  incentives 
to  an  education,  to  industry,  and  to  good  behavior ; 
and  leave  the  white  man  without  the  spur  of  those 
incentives.  Whatever  such  a  course  may  be,  in  rela- 
tion to  the  humbler  classes  of  our  white  people,  it  is 
not  statesmanship.  I  do  not  assume  that  the  average 
illiterate  negro  has  the  political  capacity  of  the  aver- 
age illiterate  white  man.  The  illiterate  white  man  at 
the  South  has  attained  —  through  the  genius  of  race 
and  the  training  of  generations  —  more  political  ca- 
pacity than  many  a  literate  negro.  Nor  is  illiteracy 
a  crime ;  but  literacy  is  a  duty.  Old  conditions  are 
passing  away.  The  white  man  of  the  future  who 
would  claim  the  political  capacity  to  vote  must  exer- 
cise enough  political  capacity  to  quahfy.  The  obliga- 
tion to  qualify  is  an  obligation  of  helpfulness.  No 
one  is  a  true  friend  to  our  white  people  who  increases 
for  the  negro  the  encouragements  and  attractions  of 
progress  and  refuses  those  incentives  and  encourage- 
ments to  the  children  of  the  white  man.  I  am  quite 
sure  that  any  suffrage  test  which  establishes  for  the 
negro  an  incentive  to  education  and  property,  and 
which  makes  the  ballot  in  the  hands  of  our  white 
population  as  free   as  ignorance  and   thriftlessness, 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND   THE  NEGRO  197 

will  serve,  permanently,  to  injure  the  stronger  race 
rather  than  the  weaker. 

"  To  the  white  boy  such  a  provision  is  an  insult  as 
well  as  an  injustice,  for  the  reason  that  it  assumes  his 
need  of  an  adventitious  advantage  over  the  negro. 
For  us  to  ask  the  negro  boy  to  submit  to  a  test  which 
we  are  unwiUing  to  apply  to  our  own  sons,  would  be, 
in  my  judgment,  a  reflection  upon  the  capacity  of  our 
white  population ;  and  our  people,  wherever  it  may 
be  attempted  by  the  politician  of  the  hour,  will  come 
so  to  regard  it.  The  absolute  supremacy  of  intelli- 
gence and  property,  secured  through  a  suffrage  test 
that  shall  be  evenly  and  equally  applicable  in  theory 
and  in  fact  to  white  and  black  —  this  will  be  the  ulti- 
mate solution  of  the  South  for  the  whole  vexed  ques- 
tion of  political  privilege."  ^ 

That  this  faith  was  not  wholly  justified  by  the  issue 
of  the  Alabama  Convention  need  not  obscure  the 
fact  that  the  final  proposals  of  the  Convention  were 
far  more  conservative,  far  more  truly  democratic, 
than  at  first  seemed  probable  or  possible.  The 
"temporary  plan"  with  its  intended  inequalities  has 
already  passed  away.  The  permanent  plan  with  its 
just  and  equal  provisions  is  still,  however,  under  the 
administration  —  as  in  Mississippi  —  of  a  system  of 
election  boards. 

If  these  boards  of  registrars  —  the  essential  and 
distinctive  provision  in  the  suffrage  system  of  the 
South  —  be  administered  arbitrarily  and  unfairly,  if 
they  perpetuate  the  moral  confusion  and  the  debas- 
ing traditions  which  they  were  intended  to  supplant, 

1  From  An  Open  Letter  to  the  Constitutional  Convention  of  Ala- 
bama, by  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  Montgomery,  Ala.,  April,  1901. 


% 


198  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

then  the  South  will  stand  condemned  both  to  the 
world  and  to  herself.  She  will  have  defeated  the 
purpose  of  her  own  deepest  political  and  moral 
forces.  But  let  no  one  assume  that  such  a  result  is 
now  in  evidence.  There  have  been  many  instances 
of  needless  and  intentional  injustice.  There  are, 
upon  the  other  hand,  many  evidences  which  indicate 
that  while  the  old  habits  have  widely  affected  the 
immediate  action  of  the  registrars,  there  is  a  growing 
disposition  toward  just  administration,  a  disposition 
to  exclude  the  unqualified  white  man  and  to  admit 
the  qualified  negro  to  the  ballot.^ 

A  dogmatic  impatience  will  avail  nothing.  The 
Nation  owes  to  the  South  an  adequate  opportunity 
for  the  trial  of  the  difficult  experiment  which  she  has 
undertaken.  Adequate  results,  a  full  determination 
of  success  or  failure,  cannot  be  attained  in  five  years 
or  in  ten.  All  criticism  of  the  actual  political  read- 
justment of  the  South  should,  moreover,  be  positive 
as  well  as  negative,  and  adverse  discussion  should 
deal  sympathetically  and  constructively  with  the 
question,  "  If  not  this,  what .-' "  What  is  the  alterna- 
tive .''    One  must  recur  again  and  again  to  the  thought 

^  According  to  the  Secretary  of  State  for  Mississippi  more  than 
15,000  negroes  are  already  registered  there  as  voters  ;  in  Virginia  the 
number  registered  is  approximately  23,000;  in  South  Carolina,  22,000; 
in  Louisiana,  6400;  in  North  Carolina,  6250.  In  the  latter  State,  as 
well  as  in  Alabama,  many  negroes  have  been  discouraged  from  offering 
to  register  by  reason  of  the  fact  that  the  State  organization  of  the  party 
with  which  they  have  been  associated  recently  refused  to  admit  even 
their  most  respected  representatives  to  its  Conventions.  Large  num- 
bers have  also  refrained  from  registration  because  of  their  unwilling- 
ness to  meet  the  poll-tax  requirement.  The  interest  of  the  masses  of 
the  negroes  in  things  political  has,  for  quite  different  reasons,  been 
much  exaggerated  by  the  representatives  of  both  parties. 


VI  THE  SOUTH   AND  THE  NEGRO  199 

that  the  fundamental  embarrassments  lie  in  the  ele- 
mentary conditions  that  precede  all  the  evils  and 
all  the  remedies.  Partially  anomalous  remedies  will 
always  arise  out  of  essentially  anomalous  conditions. 

The  task  is  so  complex,  the  difficulties  are  so 
inscrutably  formidable,  the  issues  —  involving  all  the 
deepest  and  most  fateful  passions  of  races  and  parties 
—  are  so  far-reaching,  that  one  may  well  pause  be- 
fore attempting  prematurely  to  substitute  for  a  pend- 
ing policy  of  extrication  a  policy  —  even  though 
logically  complete — which  may  be  based  upon  more 
consistent  but  perhaps  more  academic  conceptions  of 
public  right.  As  one  who  vigorously  opposed  the 
imposition  of  unequal  or  uneven  tests  the  author  feels 
that  he  may  fitly  say  that  there  would  be  nothing 
gained  and  much  lost  by  any  return  to  older  condi- 
tions, and  that  the  whole  Southern  readjustment, 
whatever  its  theoretic  inconsistencies,  should  be  ac- 
corded a  reasonable  trial. 

The  situation  presents  issues  for  which  men  upon 
either  side  have  often  been  willing  to  die.  But  for 
strong  men  it  is  sometimes  easier  to  die  than  to  wait. 
The  need  of  the  present  is  not  martyrdom,  with  all 
its  touching  and  tragic  splendor,  but  just  a  little 
patience.  Human  nature  is  everywhere  essentially 
the  same.  No  movement  of  our  human  life  can  long 
support  its  own  momentum,  or  conserve  its  own  in- 
tegrity, if  it  assume  an  irrational  or  unrighteous  form. 
PoHtical  inequalities  will  not  endure.  With  time, 
with  reason,  with  patience,  the  moral  forces  of  the 
South  can  accomplish  something  which  all  the  enact- 
ments and  threatening  of  the  Nation  can  delay  but 
cannot  produce,  —  an  equitable  public  temper,  —  with 


200  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

which  imperfect  laws  are  just,  and  without  which 
Utopia  itself  would  be  but  an  institutional  futility. 
God  has  left  no  corner  of  the  world  without  certain 
of  the  resident  forces  of  self-correction.  The  South 
feels,  and  feels  justly,  that  in  the  view  of  history  she 
has  dealt  as  scrupulously  as  the  North  with  the  literal 
obligations  of  the  Constitution,  and  that  in  the  travail 
of  her  extrication  from  an  intolerable  situation,  her 
policy  is  now  entitled  to  considerate  and  adequate 
trial.  She  has  given  her  own  welfare  as  hostage,  in 
pledge  for  her  sincerity.  With  patience,  and  with 
the  rapidly  increasing  educational  and  industrial 
quickening  of  the  South,  there  is  arising  within  her 
popular  life,  a  clearer  outlook,  a  saner  Americanism, 
a  freer  and  juster  civic  sense— and  these  are,  at 
last,  the  only  ultimate  security  of  our  constitutional 
assumptions. 

The  practical  situation  presents,  not  a  problem  of 
theoretic  politics,  sociology,  or  ethics.  It  is  a  problem 
of  flesh  and  blood,  the  elements  of  which  are  men 
and  women  and  little  children ;  the  issues  of  which 
lie  not  in  the  cheap  and  passing  advantage  of  factions 
and  parties  but  in  the  happiness  or  the  wretchedness 
of  millions  of  our  human  kind.  It  is  in  many  of  its 
aspects  the  greatest,  the  most  difficult,  problem  in 
American  life  —  a  problem  all  the  greater  because, 
North  as  well  as  South,  the  forces  of  race  prejudice 
and  of  commercial  and  political  self-absorption  are 
constantly  and  impatiently  putting  it  out  of  sight.  But 
it  is  here.  It  is  the  problem  of  taking  those  institutions 
and  those  principles  which  are  the  flowering  of  the 
political  consciousness  of  the  most  politically  efficient 
of  all  the  races  of  mankind  —  institutions  and  prin- 


VI  THE   SOUTH   AND  THE  NEGRO  20i 

ciples  to  which  even  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  unequal  save 
in  theory  —  and  securing  the  just  coordination  under 
them  of  this  stronger  race  which  has  hardly  tried 
them  with  a  race  which  had  never  dreamed  them  —  a 
race  which,  with  all  its  virtues,  is  socially  and  politi- 
cally almost  the  least  efficient  of  the  families  of  men ; 
—  two  races  separated  socially  by  antipathies  of 
blood,  separated  politically  by  the  supposed  division 
of  poHtical  interests ;  the  weaker  distrusting  the 
stronger,  the  stronger  distrusting  the  weaker;  each 
knowing  the  other  at  its  worst  rather  than  at  its 
best,  and  each  passionately  resolved  to  be  judged  by 
its  best  rather  than  by  its  worst ;  a  situation  of  actual, 
grotesque,  far-reaching  inequalities  projected  under 
the  conditions  of  a  democratic  order  and  continued 
under  the  industrial  and  political  assumption  of  the 
parity  of  classes.  A  great  problem !  A  problem 
demanding  many  things  —  the  temper  of  justice, 
unselfishness,  truth  —  but  demanding  most  of  all  a 
patient  wisdom,  a  wise,  conserving,  and  healing 
patience  —  the  patience  of  thought  and  of  work ;  not 
the  patience  of  the  opportunist  but  the  deeper  patience 
of  the  patriot.  Indeed,  if  one  may  speak  of  it  with 
anything  of  hopefulness,  it  is  only  because  this 
problem  has  now  come  for  its  adjustment  into  a  day 
when  a  deeper  sense  of  nationality  has  merged  within 
its  broader  sympathies  and  its  juster  perspective  the 
divisive  standpoints  of  the  past,  bringing  into  the 
Nation's  single  and  inclusive  fate  a  new  North  as  well 
as  a  new  South,  a  South  with  its  boundaries  at  the 
Lakes  and  the  St.  Lawrence,  a  North  with  its  boun- 
daries through  the  fields  and  the  pines  of  a  reunited 
country  at  the  waters  of  the  Southern  Gulf. 


A   NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION 


CHAPTER  VII 

A   NARRATIVE   OF    COOPERATION 


A  NARRATIVE  of  the  general  movement  represented 
by  the  Southern  Education  Board  and  the  General 
Education  Board  must  be  corrective  before  it  can  be 
descriptive.  In  phrases  of  loose  and  somewhat  inac- 
curate reference,  the  reader  of  our  current  press  has 
come  to  recognize  it  under  such  terms  as  "the 
Southern  Conference  Movement,"  "the  Southern 
Educational  Movement,"  "  the  Ogden  Movement," 
and  "the  Conference  for  Education  in  the  South." 
Of  these  terms  only  the  last-named  —  "  the  Confer- 
ence for  Education  in  the  South "  need  here  enter 
into  the  essential  structure  of  the  story.  While  the 
Southern  and  General  Education  Boards  are  distinct 
from  each  other,  and  are  distinct  from  the  Conference 
for  Education  in  the  South,  there  can  be  no  history 
of  the  Boards  without  a  preceding  and  accompanying 
history  of  the  Conference. 

It  was  in  the  year  1897  that  the  Rev.  Edward 
Abbott,  D.D.,  of  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  made  to 
Captain  W.  H.  Sale  of  the  Capon  Springs  Hotel, 
West  Virginia,  an  informal  suggestion  of  such  a 
gathering.  Dr.  Abbott  urged  the  advisability  of 
holding  at  some  point  within  the  South  a  personal 
conference  of  men  and  women.  Northern  and  South- 

205 


2o6  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

ern,  who  might  be  interested  in  the  problems  of 
Southern  education.  Captain  Sale  assented  to  the 
proposal  and  extended  to  those  who  might  attend 
the  hospitality  of  an  attractive  and  historic  inn.  It 
was  thought  that  such  a  meeting,  comprising  repre- 
sentatives both  from  the  North  and  from  the  South, 
would  be  of  service  to  the  earnest  educational  forces 
of  both  sections  —  bringing  to  the  South  a  clearer  and 
juster  perception  of  the  motives  and  policies  of  the 
North,  and  bringing  to  the  North  a  broader  and  more 
sympathetic  appreciation  of  the  needs  and  difficulties 
of  the  South.  Much  was  expected  from  the  oppor- 
tunity for  personal  association.  Accordingly,  "the 
first  Capon  Springs  Conference  for  Christian  Educa- 
tion in  the  South  assembled  in  the  chapel  on  the 
grounds  of  the  Capon  Springs  Hotel,  on  Wednesday, 
June  29,  1898,  at  8.30  p.m.  ; "  ^  and  its  membership 
formed  a  small  but  interested  company. 

The  president  of  the  first  conference  was  the 
Rt.  Rev.  T.  U.  Dudley,  LL.D.,  Bishop  of  Kentucky, 
an  alumnus  of  the  University  of  Virginia,  late 
Chancellor  of  the  University  of  the  South  at 
Sewanee,  Tennessee.  Its  vice-president  was  the 
Hon.  J.  L.  M.  Curry,  agent  of  the  Peabody  and 
Slater  Boards ;  its  secretary  and  treasurer  was  the 
Rev.  A.  B.  Hunter  of  St.  Augustine's  School, 
Raleigh,  North  Carolina.  Upon  its  executive  com- 
mittee were  Dr.  J.  A.  Quarles  of  Washington  and 
Lee  University,  Lexington,  Virginia,  and  the  Hon. 
John  Eaton,  formerly  United  States  Commissioner  of 
Education. 

The  Conference,  though  small  in  attendance,  touched 

1  Proceedings  of  the  First  Capon  Springs  Conference,  p.  3. 


VII  A  NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION  207 

a  note  of  reality  which  gave  its  work  significance  and 
made  its  existence  permanent.  Its  continuous  life 
was  made  possible  largely  through  the  broad  sympa- 
thies and  the  executive  effort  of  Dr.  HolHs  Burke 
Frissell,  of  Hampton,  Virginia.  The  second  Capon 
Springs  Conference  met  on  the  20th  of  June,  1899; 
and  the  third  met  —  also  at  Capon  Springs  —  on  the 
27th  of  June,  1900.  Of  the  second  conference  Dr. 
J.  L.  M.  Curry  was  the  president ;  of  the  third, 
Mr.  Robert  C.  Ogden  of  New  York  was  president. 
Mr,  Ogden,  by  the  unanimous  request  of  both  the 
Southern  and  the  Northern  members,  has  from  that 
time  continued  in  service  as  the  presiding  officer.  ^ 

1  Among  the  men  closely  associated  with  the  work  of  the  Con- 
ference during  the  period  of  its  sessions  at  Capon  Springs,  we  find 
a  number  of  representative  names,  in  addition  to  those  already  men- 
tioned. Among  the  members  from  the  North  were  Dr.  James 
McAlister,  president  of  the  Drexel  Institute,  Philadelphia;  William 
H.  Baldwin,  Jr.,  William  J.  Shieffelin,  George  Foster  Peabody,  George 
McAneny,  R.  Fulton  Cutting,  the  Rev.  David  H.  Greer,  Charles  E.  Bige- 
low,  Albert  Shaw,  and  Everett  P.  Wheeler,  of  New  York ;  the  Rev. 
A.  D.  Mayo,  D.D.,  and  General  Guy  V.  Henry,  of  Washington  ;  the 
Rev.  S.  D.  McConnell,  of  Brooklyn ;  George  S.  Dickerman,  of  New 
Haven  ;  and  Herbert  Welsh  of  Philadelphia. 

Among  the  members  from  the  South  were  Dr.  Ormand  Stone, 
Dr.  A.  H.  Tuttle,  and  Dr.  Charles  W.  Kent,  professors  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia;  Dr.  A.  K.  Nelson  and  Dr.  H.  St.  G.  Tucker, 
professors  in  Washington  and  Lee  University;  Dr.  Julius  D.  Dreher, 
president  of  Roanoke  College;  Dr.  J.  E.  Gilbert  of  Washington, 
D.C.;  Dr.  Charles  E.  Meserve,  president  of  Shaw  University;  the 
Rt.  Rev.  C.  K.  Nelson,  D.D.,  Bishop  of  Georgia;  the  Rt.  Rev.  Howard 
E.  Rondthaler  of  North  Carolina  ;  Dr.  F.  G.  Woodworth,  of  Tougaloo 
University,  Mississippi  ;  Captain  C.  E.  Vawter  of  Virginia  ;  Lyman 
Ward  of  Camp  Hill,  Alabama  ;  and  —  by  no  means  least  —  the 
Hon.  William  L.  Wilson,  then  president  of  Washington  and  Lee 
University.  For  a  year  as  a  member  of  its  executive  committee,  and 
always  as  an  interested  and  active  participant,  Mr.  Wilson  continued 


2o8  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

Many  of  the  papers  and  addresses  of  these  early 
meetings  are  of  permanent  value.  Dealing  frankly 
and  explicitly  with  almost  every  phase  of  the  general 
subject  of  education  —  for  both  races  —  there  is  a 
definiteness  of  attack,  a  practicality  of  purpose,  a 
generosity  of  temper,  which  made  possible  —  and 
helpful  —  the  expression  of  personal  and  sectional 
differences.  These  differences  served  but  to  illus- 
trate two  truths  —  the  truth  that  upon  the  larger 
number  of  cardinal  issues  there  is,  between  North 
and  South,  more  of  agreement  than  of  disagreement ; 
and  the  truth  that  the  frank  and  courteous  expres- 
sion of  such  differences  as  may  remain  serves  only 
to  create  an  atmosphere  of  mutual  understanding 
which  soon  establishes  the  possibility  of  intelligent 
cooperation.  If  a  literal  and  unvarying  agreement 
were  the  sole  condition  of  cooperation,  cooperation  — 
among  the  living  forces  in  any  department  of  activity 
—  would  be  impossible.  There  can  be  little  coopera- 
tion between  those,  upon  either  side,  who  know  only 
their  own  opinions  and  can  test  that  knowledge  only 
in  the  light  of  their  own  experience  ;  there  can  be 
little  cooperation  between  those  who  withhold  or  dis- 
guise what  they  really  think.  But  between  those  who 
are  ready  to  learn  as  well  as  to  teach,  and  who  sin- 
cerely attempt  to  throw  into  clear  and  ample  light 
the  landmarks  of  their  respective  positions,  there  is 
possible   a   common    outlook   and  a  common  work. 

his  association  with  the  Conference  until  faih'ng  health  forced  him  to 
retire  froni  active  public  service.  No  man  carried  greater  weight 
among  his  associates  in  these  early  and  formative  occasions.  If 
Dr.  Curry  was  the  presiding  genius,  men  like  President  Wilson,  from 
the  South,  and  Dr.  Shaw  and  Mr.  Ogden,  from  the  North,  were  high 
among  the  counsellors. 


vii  A  NARRATIVE  OF  COOPERATION  209 

Where,  upon  the  other  hand,  there  is  mutual  ig- 
norance, there  is  likely  to  be  mutual  suspicion. 
Where  there  is  mutual  knowledge,  there  may  be 
something  of  disagreement,  but  there  is  sure  to  be 
more  of  confidence;  and  confidence  rather  than  agree- 
ment is  the  essential  basis  of  intelligent  cooperation. 

Among  the  formal  resolutions  of  the  first  Confer- 
ence were  the  following  :  — 

"  Thoroughness  in  elementary  instruction  is  of  the 
first  importance,  and  in  facilitating  the  advance  along 
higher  lines  the  utmost  care  should  be  taken  to  allow 
no  faster  or  further  progress  than  is  consistent  with 
solid  and  durable  foundations." 

"  Longer  school  terms,  and  a  longer  school  life, 
better  qualified  teachers  and  more  thorough  work,  are 
greatly  to  be  desired  in  the  public  schools.  Indus- 
trial education  is  to  be  encouraged  in  all  schools,  and 
at  least  the  elements  of  it  in  the  public  schools. 
While  deprecating  the  unnecessary  multiplication  of 
rival  institutions  with  high-sounding  titles,  we  heartily 
believe  that  in  a  few  institutions  well  equipped  for  it, 
provision  should  be  made  for  the  liberal  or  higher 
education  of  those  called  to  leadership  as  preachers, 
teachers,  editors,  etc." 

"The  principles  now  widely  applied,  tending  to 
prevent  the  bestowal  of  gifts  upon  unworthy  per- 
sons, have  a  proper  field  for  exercise  in  the  support 
of  institutions  of  learning  .  .  .  and  while  fully  realiz- 
ing the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  any  such  application 
of  those  principles,  we  are  of  the  opinion  that  the 
gifts  of  the  North  in  aid  of  the  educational  work  of 
the  South  should  proceed  upon  the  lines  of  intelligent, 
equitable,  and  discriminate  selection.  ,  .  ." 


210  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  CHAP. 

"  Upon  the  principle  that  if  one  member  of  the 
Union  of  States  suffers,  all  the  members  suffer  with 
it,  the  duty  of  the  whole  country  to  foster  education 
in  every  part  of  it  is  manifest,  and  the  question  of  a 
larger  and  more  energetic  national  aid  in  behalf  of 
efforts  for  the  education  of  illiterate  masses,  deserves 
the  most  serious  consideration  of  all  patriotic  citizens, 
and  never  more  so  than  at  the  present  time." 

It  will  be  noted  that  this  resolution  is  not,  in  a 
technical  and  explicit  sense,  an  acceptance  of  the 
proposal  of  national  aid  as  a  formal  element  in  the 
policy  of  the  Conference ;  but  that  suggestion  is  given 
a  cordial  measure  of  approval.  In  the  third  Confer- 
ence a  more  explicit  declaration  in  favor  of  national 
aid  was  first  accepted  and  then  withdrawn.  The 
proposal  from  that  day  forward  has  gained  increasing 
consideration,  and  yet  there  has  been  much  unwilling- 
ness to  make  the  suggestion  an  explicit  part  of  a  for- 
mal programme.  It  has  seemed  right  as  well  as  wise 
that  those  who  accept  it  and  those  who  reject  it  should 
remain  —  without  the  introduction  of  a  divisive  issue 
—  as  colaborers  in  the  immediate  practical  advance- 
ment of  the  general  programme  of  educational  revival. 

With  the  second  Conference  the  word  "  Christian  " 
was  dropped  from  the  titular  description  of  the  gath- 
ering. This  change  was  probably  the  result,  not  of 
a  desire  to  ignore  any  aspect  of  religious  education, 
but  in  order  that  the  supposedly  "secular"  depart- 
ment of  "  public  "  education  might  have  appropriate 
and  increasing  recognition.  The  sessions  of  the  Con- 
ference are  still  opened  with  prayer,  and  the  coopera- 
tion of  the  leading  representatives  of  denominational 
education  has  always  been  requested  and  accorded. 


VII  A  NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION  211 

Among  the  resolutions  of  the  second  and  third 
Conferences  at  Capon  Springs,  were  expressions 
commending  the  idea  of  "the  travelling  hbrary  as 
especially  applicable  to  conditions  in  the  South," 
commending  the  administration  of  the  Peabody  and 
Slater  Boards,  suggesting  a  wiser  discrimination  in 
the  use  of  money  contributed  at  the  North  for  negro 
education,  advising  the  establishment  of  industrial 
reformatories  for  youthful  incorrigibles,  encouraging 
the  development  of  secondary  schools,  and  empha- 
sizing the  importance  of  industrial  education  as  a 
basis  of  cooperation  between  the  sections  (and  pre- 
sumably between  the  races).  The  resolutions,  as  well 
as  the  papers  and  addresses,  of  the  first  three  Con- 
ferences deal  fully  and  freely  with  many  of  the  inter- 
esting and  appealing  phases  of  negro  education. 
All  the  more  impressive,  therefore,  are  the  opening 
clauses  of  the  first  resolution  of  the  second  Confer- 
ence :  "  Resolved,  that  the  education  of  the  white 
race  in  the  South  is  the  pressing  and  imperative 
need,  and  the  noble  achievements  of  the  Southern 
Commonwealths  in  the  creation  of  common  school 
systems  for  both  races  deserve  not  merely  the  sym- 
pathetic recognition  of  the  country  and  of  the  world 
at  large,  but  also  give  the  old  and  high-spirited  col- 
leges and  universities  of  the  South  a  strong  claim 
upon  a  generous  share  of  that  stream  of  private 
wealth  in  the  United  States  that  is  enriching  and 
vitalizing  the  higher  education  of  the  North  and 
West."  1 

Such  a  resolution  is  an  explicit  recognition  not  only 
of  the  importance  of  white  education,  its  importance 

1  Proceedings  of  the  Second  Capon  Springs  Conference,  p.  8. 


212  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

to  the  Nation,  to  the  welfare  of  the  negro,  and  to  the 
white  population  of  the  South,  but  also  a  recognition 
of  the  nature  of  the  claims  for  endowment  which  have 
often  been  made  in  behalf  of  certain  of  the  institu- 
tions of  higher  learning  in  the  Southern  States.  The 
"wealth"  to  which  reference  is  made  is  not  the 
wealth  of  the  North,  peculiarly,  but  the  wealth  "  of 
the  United  States,"  South  as  well  as  North.  The 
appeal  to  that  wealth  is  not  based  upon  a  sense  of 
unworthy  poverty  but  upon  the  consciousness  that  the 
Southern  institution  —  like  the  Western  or  the  East- 
ern—  has  the  power  to  serve, — to  serve  the  whole 
Nation.  Its  service  is  all  the  more  real  if  it  stand 
and  work  where  true  work  is  hard,  and  if  it  minister, 
with  inadequate  equipment  and  under  difficult  condi- 
tions, to  the  reality  of  our  culture  and  to  the  breadth 
and  fulness  of  our  national  experience.^ 

When  Harvard  or  Yale  or  Princeton  University 
asks  or  receives  a  gift  from  a  Southern  man,  the  in- 

1  "  Within  the  past  five  years  the  benefactions  to  the  institutions  of 
higher  learning  in  the  United  States  have  amounted  to  a  little  more 
than  ^61,000,000.  Out  of  a  total  of  $157,000,000  of  productive  funds 
held  by  American  colleges  the  South  has  but  $15,000,000.  Out  of 
the  8,500,000  books  in  college  libraries  the  South  holds  but  1,250,000. 
The  value  of  scientific  apparatus  in  the  South  is  a  little  over  $1,000,000 
against  a  total  valuation  of  $1 7,000,000  in  the  whole  country.  The  valua- 
tion of  buildings  and  grounds  of  Southern  colleges  is  $8,500,000  in  a  total 
of$  1 46,000,000.  The  total  annual  income  available  for  higher  education 
in  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Georgia,  Alabama,  Missis- 
sippi, Louisiana,  Tennessee,  and  Kentucky  is  $19,000  less  than  the 
yearly  income  of  Harvard  University. 

"  Out  of  forty  institutions  in  the  United  States  with  productive  funds 
amounting  to  $1,000,000  or  over,  but  five  are  in  the  South  ;  of  twenty- 
one  with  productive  funds  of  between  $500,000  and  $1,000,000  but  one 
is  in  the  South."  From  "  Educational  Endowments  of  the  South,"  by 
Elizabeth  M.  Howe;    The  Popular  Science  Monthly,  October,  1903. 


VII  A  NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION  213 

stitution  is  not  said  to  have  asked  or  received,  in  any- 
political  or  sectional  sense,  "  money  from  the  South." 
Nor  does  a  Southern  institution,  in  asking  or  receiv- 
ing a  gift  from  a  Northern  man,  ask  or  receive,  in 
any  poHtical  or  sectional  sense,  "  money  from  the 
North."  The  South,  like  the  West,  is  contributing 
to  the  prosperity  of  the  country  as  a  whole ;  the 
South,  like  the  West,  may  not  improperly  share  in 
that  prosperity.  The  man,  however,  North  or  South, 
who  desires  to  add  to  the  educational  equipment  with 
which  the  Nation  is  meeting  anywhere  the  issues 
which  involve  the  clearness  of  its  thinking,  the  free- 
dom of  its  decisions,  the  wisdom  and  righteousness 
of  its  life,  adds  to  that  equipment,  not  as  to  a  local  or 
irrelevant  memorial,  but  as  to  an  expanding  asset  — 
to  the  informing  and  liberalizing  equipment  of  his 
country  and  his  age. 

It  was  at  Winston-Salem,  North  Carolina,  that  the 
Fourth  Conference  for  Education  in  the  South  opened 
its  sessions  on  the  i8th  day  of  April,  1901.  The 
death  of  the  kindly  and  courteous  proprietor  of  the 
Capon  Springs  Hotel  had  suggested  the  advisability 
of  holding  the  annual  gatherings  at  other  points 
within  the  Southern  States.  The  striking  develop- 
ment of  educational  interest  in  North  Carolina  gave 
especial  appropriateness  to  the  invitations  from  the 
city  of  Winston-Salem,  and  this  session  of  the  Con- 
ference marked  the  beginning  of  permanent  and  far- 
reaching   changes   in  its  policy  and  method.-^     The 

^  Addresses  of  peculiar  interest  and  value  were  made  by  the  Hon. 
Charles  B.  Aycock,  Governor  of  North  Carolina  ;  Dr.  G.  S.  Dicker- 
man  of  Connecticut  ;  Dr.  Charles  W.  Dabney,  president  of  the  Univer- 
sity  of  Tennessee ;    Dr.  James   E.   Russell,   dean    of    the  Teachers 


214  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

needs  for  specific  work  were  set  forth  with  such 
clearness  and  fuhiess,  the  interest  of  the  representa- 
tives of  the  South  and  the  North  was  so  deeply 
serious,  the  method  of  cooperation,  after  the  past 
years  of  experiment,  seemed  to  possess  such  genuine 
validity,  the  truly  national  significance  of  the  whole 
subject  seemed  so  increasingly  evident,  that  there 
arose  within  the  Conference  a  spontaneous  demand 
for  more  effective  organization.  The  cause  seemed 
to  be  too  great  to  be  wholly  left  to  the  inspirational 
force  of  an  annual  meeting.  There  seemed  to  be  a 
clear  need  for  an  executive  body,  a  body  which  might 
give  continuous  and  more  general  influence  to  the 
purposes  and  policies  which  the  Conference  had  come 
to  represent.  The  following  resolutions,  accompanied 
by  their  preamble,  were  unanimously  adopted  :  — 

"  The  Conference  for  Education  in  the  South,  on 
the  occasion  of  its  fourth  annual  meeting,  reaffirms 
its  conviction  that  the  overshadowing  and  supreme 
public  need  of  our  time,  as  we  pass  the  threshold  of 
a  new  century,  is  the  education  of  the  children  of  all 
the  people. 

■^  "  We  declare  such  education  to  be  the  foremost 
task  of  our  statesmanship,  and  the  most  worthy  object 
of  philanthropy.  With  the  expansion  of  our  popula- 
tion and  the  growth  of  industry  and  economic  re- 
sources, we  recognize  in  a  fitting  and  universal  educa- 

College  of  New  York  ;  Hon.  G.  R.  Glenn,  state  superintendent  of 
education  for  Georgia  ;  Dr.  Truman  J.  Backus  of  Brooklyn,  New  York  ; 
Dr.  Charles  D.  Mclver,  president  of  the  State  Normal  College  of  North 
Carolina  ;  Dr.  Francis  G.  Peabody  and  Dr.  John  Graham  Brooks  of 
Cambridge,  Massachusetts  ;  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  of  New  York  ;  Mr. 
Carleton  B.  Gibson  of  Georgia  ;  and  Dr.  George  T.  Winston,  presi- 
dent of  the  Agricultural  and  Mechanical  College  of  North  Carolina. 


VII  A  NARRATIVE   OF  COOPERATION  215 

tion  and  training  for  the  home,  for  the  farm  and  the 
workshop,  and  for  the  exercise  of  the  duties  of  citizen- 
ship, the  only  salvation  for  our  American  standards 
of  family  and  social  life  and  the  only  hope  for  the 
perpetuity  of  our  institutions,  founded  by  our  fore- 
fathers on  the  four  corner-stones  of  intelHgence, 
virtue,  economic  efficiency,  and  capacity  for  political 
self-control. 

"We  recognize  the  value  of  efforts  hitherto  made 
to  solve  our  educational  problems,  both  as  respects 
the  methods  to  be  used,  and  also  as  regards  the  sheer 
quantity  of  work  to  be  done.  But  we  also  find  in 
the  facts  as  presented  at  the  sessions  of  this  Con- 
ference the  imperative  need  of  renewed  efforts  on  a 
larger  scale  ;  and  we  find  in  the  improved  financial 
outlook  of  the  country  and  in  the  advancing  state  of 
public  opinion  better  hopes  than  ever  before  of  a 
larger  response  to  this  greater  need. 

"  As  the  first  great  need  of  our  people  is  adequate 
elementary  instruction,  and  as  this  instruction  must 
come  to  children  so  largely  through  mothers  and 
women-teachers  in  their  homes  and  primary  schools, 
we  desire  to  emphasize  our  belief  in  the  wisdom  of 
making  the  most  liberal  investments  possible  in  the 
education  of  girls  and  women. 

"  Whereas,  therefore,  the  conditions  existing  in  the 
Southern  States  seem  now  fully  ripe  for  the  large 
development  as  well  as  further  improvement  of  the 
schools;  and, 

"Whereas,  This  Conference  desires  to  associate 
itself  actively  with  the  work  of  organizing  better 
school  systems  and  extending  their  advantages  to  all 
the  people :  — 


2l6  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

*'  Resolved,  that  this  Conference  proceed  to  organ- 
ize by  the  appointment  of  an  Executive  Board  of 
seven,  who  shall  be  fully  authorized  and  empowered 
to  conduct :  — 

"I.  A  campaign  of  education  for  free  schools  for 
all  the  people,  by  supplying  literature  to  the  news- 
paper and  periodical  press,  by  participation  in  educa- 
tional meetings  and  by  general  correspondence ;  and, 

"  2.  To  conduct  a  Bureau  of  Information  and 
Advice  on  Legislation  and  School  Organization. 

"  For  these  purposes  this  Board  is  authorized  to 
raise  funds  and  disburse  them,  to  employ  a  secretary  or 
agent,  and  to  do  whatever  may  be  necessary  to  carry 
out  effectively  these  measures  and  others  that  may 
from  time  to  time  be  found  feasible  and  desirable."  ^ 

The  appointment  of  this  executive  body  was  as- 
signed as  a  duty  to  Mr.  Robert  C.  Ogden,  of  New 
York,  the  presiding  officer  of  the  Conference,  and  — 
by  special  resolution  —  the  president  was  made  the 
eighth  member  of  the  Board.  Mr.  Ogden's  broad 
appreciation  of  Southern  educational  conditions,  his 
executive  power,  and  his  well-tried  capacity  for  disin- 
terested and  patriotic  service,  made  his  personal  rela- 
tion to  the  Board  an  indispensable  condition  of  its 
success. 

The  president  took  no  immediate  action.  It  was 
only  after  several  months  of  extended  correspondence 
and  of  careful  deliberation  that  he  called  together 
the  following  gentlemen :  the  Hon.  J.  L.  M.  Curry, 
agent  of  the  Peabody  and  Slater  Boards,  Washing- 
ton, D.C. ;  Dr.  Edwin  A.  Alderman,  formerly  presi- 

^  Proceedings  of  the  Fourth  Conference  for  Education  in  the  South, 
p.  II. 


VII  A  NARRATIVE  OF  COOPERATION  217 

dent  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina  and  now 
president  of  Tulane  University,  New  Orleans,  Louisi- 
ana ;  Dr.  Wallace  Buttrick  of  Albany,  New  York ;  Dr. 
Charles  W.  Dabney,  president  of  the  University  of 
Tennessee,  Knoxville,  Tennessee ;  Dr.  Hollis  Burke 
Frissell,  principal  of  Hampton  Institute,  Hampton, 
Virginia ;  Mr.  George  Foster  Peabody,  a  native  of 
Georgia,  now  a  citizen  of  Brooklyn,  New  York ;  and 
Dr.  Charles  D.  Mclver,  president  of  the  State  Nor- 
mal College  of  North  Carolina.  These  gentlemen, 
five  from  the  South  and  three  from  the  North,  met 
for  organization  in  the  city  of  New  York  on  Novem- 
ber 3,  1 90 1.  They  added  to  their  number  Mr.  Will- 
iam H.  Baldwin,  Jr.,  president  of  the  Long  Island 
R.R. ;  Dr.  Albert  Shaw,  editor  of  the  Review  of  Re- 
views;  Dr.  Walter  H.  Page,  editor  of  The  World's 
Work;  and  the  Hon.  H.  H.  Hanna  of  Indianapolis, 
Indiana.  Mr.  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy  of  Montgom- 
ery, Alabama,  was  appointed  as  the  executive  secre- 
tary, associated  with  the  president,  and  was  later  added 
to  the  membership  of  the  Board  as  its  active  executive 
officer.  Although  not  members  of  the  Board,  Dr. 
G.  S.  Dickerman  of  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  and  Dr. 
Booker  T.  Washington  of  Tuskegee,  Alabama,  were 
associated  —  as  field  agents  —  with  its  working  force. 
Dr.  Washington  has  been  a  wise  counsellor  in  refer- 
ence to  the  educational  problems  affecting  the  colored 
people  of  the  South,  and  Dr.  Dickerman  had  served 
for  two  years  with  great  acceptability  as  the  special 
agent  of  the  Conference. 

The  Southern  Education  Board  was  organized  with 
Robert  C.  Ogden  as  president,  Charles  D.  Mclver 
as  recording  secretary,  George  Foster    Peabody    as 


2i8  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

treasurer,  and  J.  L.  M.  Curry  as  supervising  direc- 
tor. The  active  work  at  the  South  was  committed  to 
a  campaign  committee  altogether  consisting  of  South- 
ern members  and  acting  under  the  general  direction 
of  Dr.  Curry.  The  Board  had  no  funds  to  disburse. 
Its  operating  expenses  for  an  experimental  period  of 
two  years  had  been  underwritten  by  one  of  its 
members.  These  expenses  involved  the  inaugura- 
tion of  a  Bureau  of  Investigation  and  Publicity,  at 
Knoxville,  under  the  direction  of  Dr.  Dabney,  and 
the  conduct  of  a  general  "  campaign  "  in  certain  sec- 
tions of  the  South,  where  cooperation  might  be  re- 
quested for  the  bettering  of  the  public  school  facilities 
and  for  the  enlargement  of  school  appropriations. 
Shortly  after  the  organization  of  the  Southern 
Education  Board,  and  largely  as  an  additional  result 
of  the  forces  which  had  been  called  into  existence  by 
the  Conference,  there  was  also  organized  "  the  Gen- 
eral Education  Board."  Its  chairman  was  Mr. 
William  H.  Baldwin,  Jr.,  and  among  its  members 
were  Messrs.  Curry,  Ogden,  Peabody,  Buttrick,  Shaw, 
and  Page,  of  the  Southern  Board.  In  addition  to 
these  gentlemen,  there  were  elected  Mr.  Frederick  T. 
Gates,  Mr.  John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr.,  and  Mr.  Morris 
K.  Jesup,  of  New  York,  and  Dr.  Daniel  C.  Gilman, 
president  of  the  Carnegie  Institution.  Dr.  Wallace 
Buttrick  became  the  secretary  and  executive  officer, 
the  Board  was  incorporated  by  special  act  of  Con- 
gress, and  permanent  offices  were  opened  at  54 
WilUam  St.,  New  York  City. 

The  Southern  Education  Board,  as  has  been  ex- 
plained, makes  no  direct  gifts  to  educational  institu- 


vn  A  NARRATIVE  OF  COOPERATION  219 

tions.  It  exists  to  aid  in  the  development  and  in  the 
wise  direction  of  educational  sentiment.  Though 
working  at  the  South  to  secure  larger  policies  of  local 
support  for  popular  education,  and  though  working, 
North  and  South,  to  encourage  larger  policies  of  phi- 
lanthropy in  relation  to  the  educational  needs  of  rural 
localities,  it  does  not  hold  nor  distribute  funds  for 
educational  purposes. 

This  is  the  work  of  the  General  Education  Board, 
a  body  with  three  distinctive  functions  which  may  be 
thus  defined :  — 

(a)  The  careful  investigation  and  the  accurate  col- 
lection and  presentation  of  the  facts  as  to  the  educa- 
tional situation  at  the  South.  I  say  the  South,  and 
yet  the  South  is  in  no  final  or  exclusive  sense  the 
one  field  of  its  interest.  Wherever  public  education, 
as  the  chief  constructive  policy  in  American  life,  needs 
the  support  of  exact  inquiry  and  of  intelligent  and  sym- 
pathetic interest,  the  General  Education  Board  may  find 
its  work.  The  educational  situation  at  the  South,  from 
causes  both  preceding  and  following  the  Civil  War, 
claims  at  present  the  especial  interest  not  merely  of 
the  Nation  but  of  the  world.  To  secure  not  only  the 
statistics,  but  the  facts  back  of  the  statistics,  to  appre- 
hend and  truly  to  record  the  Hfe  which  lies  behind 
the  formal  phenomena  of  schoolhouses  and  school 
administration,  to  perceive  just  what  the  South  has, 
in  order  rightly  to  understand  just  what  the  South 
needs  —  this  is  the  work  with  which  the  General 
Education  Board  has  thus  far  been  primarily  con- 
cerned. So  fully  has  it  had  the  intelligent  and  appre- 
ciative cooperation  of  the  educational  authorities  of 
the  South  that  its  data  from  the  State  of  Mississippi 


220  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

(for  example)  form  a  more  comprehensive  collection 
than  any  body  of  reports  to  be  found  in  Mississippi. 
What  is  true  of  this  State  is  true  of  others.  Such 
results  have  necessarily  been  dependent,  in  large 
degree,  upon  the  aid  of  the  officials  and  teachers  of 
the  South.  The  Board  may  be  of  service  to  them 
only  because  it  has  been  served  by  them. 

{b)  In  addition  to  the  work  of  investigation,  the 
Board  is  also  committed  —  subject  to  the  discretion  of 
its  authorities  and  the  limit  of  its  resources  —  to  a 
policy  of  assistance.  This  policy  represents  in  its 
purpose  no  mere  effort  of  the  wealth  of  one  section 
to  meet  the  needs  of  another  section.  The  Board 
was  organized  under  Act  of  the  National  Congress  in 
order  that  the  sources  of  its  support  might  become 
as  broadly  national  as  its  interests,  might  be  found  in 
the  wealth  of  the  South  as  well  as  in  the  wealth  of 
the  North  and  East  and  West.  Nor  have  the  gifts 
of  the  General  Education  Board  represented  a  sub- 
stitute for  local  effort.  They  have  represented  an 
answer  to  it.  They  have  not  forestalled  initiative. 
They  have  asked  it.  Their  gifts  have  been  so  tendered 
as  to  awaken  and  stimulate  those  forces  of  self-help 
which  form  the  amplest  security  of  public  invest- 
ments. The  resources  of  the  Board  have  been  too 
limited,  moreover,  for  any  policy  of  general  aid.  They 
have  permitted,  however,  certain  small  conditional 
appropriations  to  well-accredited  institutions  of  both 
races  within  the  South.  Especially  in  Georgia,  Ala- 
bama, North  Carolina,  and  Tennessee,  these  gifts 
have  served  as  an  indication  of  the  spirit,  and  as  an 
earnest  of  the  sympathetic  and  inclusive  purpose  of 
the  organization.     With  increasing  means,  this  work 


vii  A  NARRATIVE  OF  COOPERATION  221 

may  be  done  with  broader  power  and  more  far-reach- 
ing benefit. 

(c)  No  limitation  of  means  has  served,  however,  to 
arrest  the  work  which  many  have  regarded  as  of 
more  preliminary  importance  than  the  gifts  of  aid. 
This  has  been  the  conduct  of  certain  phases  of  coop- 
erative experiment,  in  order  to  determine  just  how 
the  influences  represented  by  the  Board  and  the  influ- 
ences represented  in  the  South  may  most  wisely  join 
their  forces.  At  one  point,  a  rural  county  having  a 
short  school  term  has  been  enabled  to  lengthen  its 
school  period  at  one  end  of  the  year  upon  condition 
that  the  county  from  its  own  resources  would  add  a 
month  at  the  other  end.  At  another  point  a  model 
country  school  has  been  established,  with  its  "  teach- 
erage  "  and  its  school  farm  ;  at  a  number  of  the  State 
Universities  of  the  South,  such  as  the  University  of 
Tennessee,  the  University  of  Georgia,  the  University 
of  North  Carolina,  the  University  of  Mississippi,  and 
the  University  of  Virginia,  assistance  has  been  given 
in  the  conduct  of  "  Summer  Schools  "  for  teachers. 
There  is  an  indication  of  the  moral  earnestness  of  the 
teaching  force  of  the  South  in  the  mere  recital  of  the 
fact  that  in  the  summer  of  1903  more  than  ten  thou- 
sand of  these  young  men  and  women  thus  gave  their 
vacation  period  to  the  work  of  securing  a  broader 
and  fuller  equipment  for  their  profession.  For  two 
summers  in  succession  more  than  two  thousand  have 
gathered  at  one  university  alone  —  the  University  of 
Tennessee. 

Perhaps,  however,  the  most  striking  of  the  cooper- 
ative experiments  of  the  General  Education  Board  is 
to  be  found  in  the  series  of   personal  conferences 


222  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

between  the  representatives  of  the  Board  and  the 
county  superintendents  of  education.  In  ten  of  the 
Southern  States  these  conferences  have  thus  far  been 
held ;  and  the  States  which  have  not  yet  been  visited 
have  taken  the  initiative  in  requesting  them.  Coming 
to  an  accessible  common  point  within  the  State,  the 
superintendents  of  education  from  the  several  counties 
have  met  with  the  representatives  of  the  Board  in 
frank  and  cordial  interchange  of  information  and 
ideas.  Elaborate  bulletins  of  data  from  each  county 
have  been  filled  out,  signed,  and  filed.  The  vivid 
interests  and  forces  which  can  never  be  crowded  into 
"  reports "  have  come  naturally  and  rightly  to  the 
surface;  misunderstandings  have  been  adjusted, 
misinformation  has  been  corrected,  and  in  the  com- 
mon and  supreme  concern  for  the  life  and  training  of 
the  child,  the  representatives  of  every  phase  of  feeling 
and  opinion  have  found  the  deep  and  serious  basis  of 
cooperation.  Thus  in  contact  with  men  coming 
directly  from  the  people,  the  authorities  of  the  Board 
have  sought  that  fulness  and  freedom  of  information 
which  might  place  its  policies  and  its  activities  in 
close  and  helpful  touch  with  the  actual  South.  The 
Board,  in  every  Southern  State,  has  been  accorded  the 
interest  and  aid  of  the  State  Department  of  Education. 
Thus,  through  the  gathering  and  classifying  of 
information,  through  the  extension  of  aid  under  the 
form  of  conditional  appropriations  to  certain  selected 
educational  institutions,  and  through  the  effort  to 
bring  its  policies  into  intelligent  and  practical  relation 
with  the  real  working  forces  of  the  South,  the 
General  Education  Board  has  attempted,  and  has 
made,  what  may  be  called  a  demonstration  of  method. 


vil  A   NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION  223 

It  has  established  a  working  basis  not  only  for  its  own 
activities  but  for  the  activities  of  others.  The 
resources  of  philanthropy,  however  large  or  however 
varied,  whether  representing  the  wealth  of  the  North 
or  of  the  South,  may  find  in  its  large  experience  and 
its  ample  records  a  helpful  if  not  an  authoritative 
measure  of  information  and  suggestion.  Its  files  are 
not  for  any  self-interested  or  private  use.  Its  facili- 
ties and  its  reports  are  at  the  service  of  the  public. 

The  Southern  Education  Board,  as  already  stated, 
has  found  its  distinctive  service  in  the  deepening  and 
quickening  of  educational  sentiment  within  the  South. 
Its  work  has  not  been  that  of  employing  the  resources 
of  philanthropy.  It  has  been  the  task  of  directly 
appealing  to  the  resources  of  taxation,  to  those  local 
forces  of  self-interest  and  self-development  by  which 
the  State  expends  a  Httle  money  for  a  larger  life  and 
through  which  the  community  builds  the  schoolhouse 
as  the  temple  of  its  own  consecration  to  the  joy,  the 
usefulness,  and  the  liberties  of  its  children. 

No  work  for  the  future  of  the  South  can  be  con- 
ducted in  forgetfulness  of  what  the  South  has  done. 
The  nature  of  her  progress,  when  considered  in  rela- 
tion to  her  difficulties,  must  bring  a  sense  of  gratitude 
to  the  true  citizen  of  the  Nation,  whether  he  be 
Southerner  or  Northerner.  And  yet  no  true  work 
for  the  future  can  find  the  goal  of  its  attainment  in 
the  memory  of  the  past  or  in  the  mere  consideration 
of  the  present.  There  remains  how  much  to  do ! 
The  task  of  the  South  must  still  bring  for  many  a 
year  a  searching  test  to  her  patience,  her  generosity, 
her   wisdom.     To    help    directly  with    this   task ;  to 


224  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

increase  in  the  treasury  of  her  local  heart  the  South's 
best  capital  of  enterprise,  —  her  fund  of  interest,  of 
sane  and  well-measured  self-command,  of  civic  hope, 
of  true  yet  unstrident  confidence  in  herself,  her 
children,  her  resources,  and  her  future  ;  to  stand  for 
a  patriotism  which  is  not  merely  retrospective  but 
constructive,  —  this,  as  many  have  conceived  it,  is 
the  broader  service  of  the  Southern  Education  Board. 
'  It  is  a  work  to  which  thousands  of  men  and  women 
have  long  given  themselves.  For  this  Board  does 
not  assume  that  it  has  created  the  educational  revival 
at  the  South.  Its  work  is  but  a  part  of  that  revival 
—  has  advanced  it  and  has  been  advanced  by  it. 
Within  an  enlarging  confederacy  of  local  interests 
and  local  forces,  it  has  served  to  commend  and  to 
reenforce  the  responsibility  of  the  people  for  the 
education  of  all  the  people,  thus  taking  its  vigorous 
part  in  the  creation  of  an  educational  sentiment  which 
may  answer  the  gifts  of  philanthropy  with  the  larger 
gifts  of  taxation,  and  which  —  with  or  without  phi- 
lanthropy —  may  provide  for  the  children  of  the  State 
a  longer  school  term  and  a  better  school  equipment. 

Its  bureau  of  publication  has  circulated  the  litera- 
ture of  the  subject.  Through  circulars  and  special 
bulletins  the  press  of  the  South  has  been  freely  in- 
formed as  to  educational  needs  and  helpful  educa- 
tional methods.  Under  the  auspices  of  the  Board,  or 
in  cooperation  with  the  local  authorities,  hundreds  of 
public  meetings  have  been  organized,  and  eager  audi- 
ences, sometimes  in  the  towns,  sometimes  in  the 
country,  have  been  addressed  by  trusted  and  effective 
speakers.  Its  Southern  representatives  have  entered 
vigorously  and  untiringly  into  the  definite  campaign 


vil  A  NARRATIVE   OF  COOPERATION  225 

to  secure  a  larger  measure  of  local  taxation  for  the 
public  schools ;  and,  in  the  State  of  North  Carolina, 
where,  under  Dr.  Mclver  and  his  associates,  this  work 
has  been  most  successfully  conducted,  there  are  now  in 
one  county  more  "  local-tax  districts"  (school  districts 
in  which  the  additional  tax  for  schools  has  been  voted 
by  the  people)  than  existed  in  the  whole  State  prior  to 
the  activity  of  the  Board.  In  1902,  North  Carolina 
had  56  local  tax  communities ;  in  January  of  1904  there 
were  186,  with  an  anticipated  additional  increase  of 
nearly  100  within  the  next  half  year.  In  other  South- 
ern States  similar  work  has  been  accomplished.  It 
cannot  be  said  that  the  results  attained  are  wholly  due 
to  this  Board  alone.  Its  part  in  this  work,  however, 
has  been  conspicuous,  and,  at  many  points,  decisive. 

For  their  popular  interpretation,  both  the  General 
Education  Board  and  the  Southern  Education  Board 
are  still  much  indebted  to  the  Conference  for  Educa- 
tion in  the  South.  The  existence  of  the  Boards  has 
not  made  the  Conference  obsolete.  Its  annual  ses- 
sions have  grown  both  in  numbers  and  in  popular 
authority.  It  still  brings  together  the  interested  and 
representative  forces  of  all  sections.  It  still  makes 
from  its  platform  a  palpable  and  inspiring  demonstra- 
tion of  cooperative  statesmanship,  speakers  from  the 
North  and  from  the  South  dealing  in  candor  and  fra- 
ternity, with  those  industrial,  social,  or  political  con- 
ditions which  retard  or  advance  the  popular  develop- 
ment of  the  educated  life.  The  fifth  Conference,  by 
special  invitation  of  the  legislature  of  the  State, 
gathered  at  Athens,  the  home  of  the  University  of 
Georgia,  April  24,  1902.     The  sixth  Conference,  by 

Q 


226  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

invitation  of  the  Governor,  the  legislature,  the  Uni- 
versity of  Virginia,  and  the  educational  forces  of  the 
State,  met  at  Richmond,  Virginia,  on  April  22,  1903. 
Of  the  deep  enthusiasm  of  the  crowded  audiences 
at  both  these  Conferences  one  may  not  write  at 
length.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  dwell  upon  any  of  the 
interesting  details  of  what  were,  in  fact,  memorable 
occasions.^ 

II 

Through  these  annual  Conferences  as  well  as 
through  the  printed  issues  and  the  public  declara- 
tions of  the  members  of  the  Southern  and  General 
Education  Boards,  the  educational  situation  at  the 
South    has    been    brought    more   clearly  and    more 

1  Among  those  in  attendance  at  one  or  the  other  of  these  later 
meetings,  many  of  the  speakers  being  present  at  both,  were  the  Gov- 
ernor of  Virginia,  the  Governor  of  North  Carolina,  the  State  superin- 
tendents of  education  from  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  South  Carolina, 
Georgia,  Florida,  Alabama,  Tennessee,  Mississippi,  Louisiana,  and 
Texas  ;  John  W.  Abercrombie,  president  of  the  University  of  Ala- 
bama ;  J.  H.  Kirkland,  president  of  Vanderbilt  University  ;  F.  P. 
Venable,  president  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina  ;  B.  C.  Cald- 
well, president  of  the  State  Normal  College  of  Louisiana  ;  B.  L.  Wig- 
gins, chancellor  of  the  University  of  the  South,  Sewanee,  Tennessee  ; 
Clark  Howell,  editor  of  the  Atlanta  Constitution  ;  John  B.  Knox  and 
Sydney  J.  Bowie  of  Alabama  ;  Hoke  Smith  of  Georgia  ;  Hamilton 
W.  Mabie,  associate  editor  of  the  Outlook,  New  York  ;  Richard 
Watson  Gilder,  editor  of  the  Century,  New  York  ;  L.  H.  Bailey,  pro- 
fessor in  Cornell  University,  Ithaca,  New  York  ;  Dr.  Felix  Adler,  New 
York  ;  Dr.  Richard  S.  Jesse,  president  of  the  University  of  Missouri  ; 
R.  Fulton  Cutting  of  New  York  ;  Josephus  Daniels  of  North  Caro- 
lina ;  Walter  B.  Hill,  chancellor  of  the  University  of  Georgia  ;  W. 
W.  Stetson,  state  superintendent  of  public  instruction  for  Maine;  R. 
Heath  Dabney,  Paul  B.  Barringer,  and  Charles  W.  Kent,  professors  in 
the  University  of  Virginia,  Dr.  W.  T.  Harris,  U.  S.  Commissioner  of 
Education,  and  others  who  have  been  named  in  reference  to  their 
connection  with  the  earlier  Conferences. 


Vll  A  NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION  227 

fully  into  the  national  consciousness.  The  intelli- 
gent forces  of  American  opinion  have  been  won 
to  a  fairer  appreciation  of  Southern  difficulties.  The 
revelation  of  Southern  needs  has  brought  into  only 
more  evident  relief  the  abundant  heroism  of  those 
human  forces  with  which  the  South  is  responding  to 
her  task.  In  proportion  to  her  means  the  South  is 
perhaps  expending  as  much  for  public  education,  per 
capita  of  her  children  of  school  age,  as  States  like 
Michigan  in  the  West  or  New  York  in  the  East.^  Yet 
those  whose  burdens  are  abnormal  need  the  expendi- 
ture of  more  than  normal  power,  and  those  whose  edu- 
cational progress  has  been  so  long  and  so  unhappily 
retarded  —  and  yet  whose  populations  are  constantly 
in  competition  with  the  more  generally  educated 
masses  of  other  sections  —  can  equalize  the  condi- 
tions of  competition  only  by  increasing  the  volume 
of  expenditure.  The  man  who  is  toward  the  rear  in 
the  march  of  progress  will  never  get  to  the  front 
simply  by  moving  as  fast  as  the  others  move.  If  he 
is  to  get  to  the  front,  he  must  expend  sufficient  energy 

1  The  amount  raised  for  public  education  per  capita  of  the  school 
population,  is  $22.37  ^°  Massachusetts  and  $20.88  in  New  York,  as 
contrasted  with  $2.87  in  Tennessee  and  $2.28  in  North  Carolina  ;  but, 
according  to  Dr.  Charles  W.  Dabney,  back  of  each  child  in  Tennessee 
there  is  only  $509  of  taxable  property,  and  in  North  Carolina  only 
$337,  as  contrasted  with  $1996  in  Michigan  and  $2661  in  New  York. 
(See  Report  of  the  Sixth  Conference  for  Education  in  the  South,  p.  40.) 
We  may  note  also  that  in  the  Northern  and  Western  States  the  propor- 
tion of  adult  males  to  the  children  of  school  age  is  from  50  to  100  per 
cent  greater  than  at  the  South.  (See  the  Appendix  to  this  volume, 
p.  304,  Table  VII,  columns  8  and  13.)  The  male  producer  at  the  South 
may  thus  be  called  upon  to  bear  a  larger  economic  burden,  under  the 
system  of  pubHc  education,  than  a  like  producer  at  the  North.  This 
burden  is  still  further  distributed  at  the  North  by  the  much  larger  num- 
ber of  women  engaged  in  the  higher  productive  employments. 


228 


THE  PRESENT   SOUTH 


CHAP. 


to  move  as  fast  as  the  others  move,  plus  the  energy 
which  must  be  expended  to  bring  him  from  the  rear 
to  the  front.  The  South  is  finding  her  duty,  there- 
fore, not  merely  in  the  measure  of  her  resources  but 
in  the  appalling  measure  of  her  needs. 

Let  us  turn  again,  therefore,  to  a  brief  statement 
of  her  educational  situation.  I  quote  from  Dr.  Charles 
W.  Dabney,  president  of  the  University  of  Tennes- 
see. "  Our  Southern  problem,"  says  Dr.  Dabney, 
"  is  the  education  of  all  the  people  of  the  South. 
First,  who  are  these  people .-'  In  1900  the  States 
south  of  the  Potomac  and  east  of  the  Mississippi  con- 
tained, in  round  numbers,  16,400,000  people,  10,400,000 
of  them  white  and  6,000,000  black.  In  these  States 
there  are  3,981,000  white  and  2,420,000  colored  chil- 
dren of  school  age  (five  to  twenty  years),  a  total  of 
6,401,000.  They  are  distributed  among  the  States  as 
follows :  — 


White 

Colored 

Total 

Virginia 

436,000 

269,000 

705,000 

West  Virginia 

342,000 

15,000 

357,000 

North  Carolina 

491,000 

263,000 

754,000 

South  Carolina 

218,000 

342,000 

560,000 

Georgia    .     . 

458,000 

428,000 

886,000 

Florida     .     , 

1 10,000 

87,000 

197,000 

Alabama  .     . 

390,000 

340,000 

730,000 

Mississippi    . 

253,000 

380,000 

633,000 

Tennessee    . 

590,000 

191,000 

781,000 

Kentucky 

693,000 

105,000 
2,420,000 

798,000 

Totals  1 

3,981,000 

6,401,000 

1  To  these  totals  might  well  be  added  the  children  of  school  age  in 
Arkansas,  Louisiana,  and  Texas.  Arkansas  has  380,815  white,  148,534 
colored  ;  Louisiana  276,563  white,  261,453  colored  ;  Texas  955,906 
white,  259,491  colored. 


vn  A  NARRATIVE  OF  COOPERATION  229 

"  What  an  army  of  young  people  to  be  educated ! 
How  they  are  marching  on !  Many  of  them  are  al- 
ready beyond  our  help ;  all  will  be  in  less  than  ten 
years;  and  still  they  come  marching  up  from  the 
cradles  into  American  citizenship. 

"  The  important  question  is,  What  are  we  in  the 
South  doing  for  these  children  ?  Let  us  see.  Only 
60  per  cent  of  them  were  enrolled  in  the  schools  in 
1900.  The  average  daily  attendance  was  only  70  per 
cent  of  those  enrolled.  Only  42  per  cent  are  actually 
at  school.  One-half  of  the  negroes  get  no  schooling 
whatever.  One  white  child  in  five  is  left  wholly 
illiterate.  Careful  analysis  of  the  reports  of  State 
superintendents  showing  the  attendance  by  grades, 
indicates  that  the  average  child,  whites  and  blacks 
together,  who  attends  school  at  all  stops  with  the 
third  grade. 

"  In  North  Carolina  the  average  citizen  gets  only 
2.6  years,  in  South  Carolina,  2.5  years,  in  Alabama, 
2.4  years  of  schooling,  both  private  and  public.  In 
the  whole  South  the  average  citizen  gets  only  three 
years  of  schooling  of  all  kinds  in  his  entire  life ;  and 
what  schooling  it  is !  This  is  the  way  we  are  educat- 
ing these  citizens  of  the  Republic,  the  voters  who  will 
have  to  determine  the  destinies  not  only  of  this  peo- 
ple but  of  miUions  of  others  beyond  the  seas. 

"  But  why  is  it  that  the  children  get  so  little  educa- 
tion .''  Have  we  no  schools  in  the  country }  Yes, 
but  what  kind  of  schools  .'*  The  average  value  of  a 
school  property  in  North  Carolina  is  $180,  in  South 
Carolina,  $178,  in  Georgia,  $523,  and  in  Alabama, 
%^\2.  The  average  monthly  salary  of  a  teacher  in 
North  Carolina  is  $23.36,  in  South  Carolina,  1^23.20, 


230  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  CHAP. 

in  Georgia,  $27,  and  in  Alabama,  $27.50.  The  schools 
have  been  open  in  North  Carolina  an  average  of  only 
70.8  days  in  the  whole  year,  in  South  Carolina,  88.4, 
in  Georgia,  112,  and  in  Alabama,  78.3.  The  average 
expenditure  per  pupil  in  average  attendance  has  been, 
in  North  Carolina  $4.34,  in  South  Carolina  $4.44,  in 
Georgia  $6.64,  and  in  Alabama  about  $4.00  per  an- 
num. [I  am  glad  to  say  that  these  per  capita  ex- 
penditures are  now  a  little  larger  and  the  school 
terms  a  little  longer  than  when  this  statement  was 
made.]  In  other  words,  in  these  States,  in  school- 
houses  costing  an  average  of  $276  each,  under  teach- 
ers receiving  an  average  salary  of  1^25  a  month,  we 
have  been  giving  the  children  in  actual  attendance 
five  cents'  worth  of  education  a  day  for  87  days  only 
in  the  year.  This  is  the  way  we  have  been  schooling 
the  children."  1 

The  reading  of  Dr.  Dabney's  figures  is  not  a  cheer- 
ing diversion.  And  yet  it  were  folly  to  assume  that 
we  can  aid  the  South  by  the  exercise  of  a  blind  affec- 
tion which  would  blink  or  conceal  the  facts.  These 
facts  are  not  taken  from  the  tale  of  an  enemy ;  they 
are  taken  from  the  reports  of  our  own  superintend- 
ents of  pubHc  instruction,  they  form  a  part  of  our 
local  as  well  as  our  national  records.  The  first  duty 
of  the  physician  who  would  apply  a  remedy  lies  in  a 
sympathetic,  but  fearless  diagnosis.  The  first  duty 
of  a  wise  educational  statesmanship  is  a  clear  and 
unflinching  perception  of  the  situation.  There  is  no 
disgrace  in  our  illiteracy.  It  is  due  to  historic  and 
formidable  forces.     There  would  be  every  disgrace, 

1  See  also  Report  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  Sixth  Conference  for 
Education  in  the  South,  1903,  p.  37. 


VII  A  NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION  231 

however,  in  a  policy  which  would  now  perpetuate  it 
by  concealment,  and  which  would  feed  its  indifference 
upon  the  husks  of  a  flattering  and  senseless  optimism. 

It  has  been  said  that  we  must  educate.  When  we 
say  "  we,"  it  is  evident  that  we  must  count  all  of  our 
people  within  the  fellowship  of  responsibility.  Within 
the  partnership  of  obligation,  the  great  masses  of  our 
white  people  should  hold  the  first  place  of  initiative, 
dignity,  and  service.  No  man  can  go  to  them  with 
"  alms."  To  rouse  them  to  see  their  duty,  their  duty 
to  their  children,  to  themselves,  and  to  their  country, 
and  then  to  help  them  see  how  bravely  and  how  well 
they  themselves  can  perform  this  duty  —  we  have 
here  the  fundamental  and  distinctive  element  in  the 
policy  of  the  Southern  Board. 

But  the  principle  of  initiative  may  well  be  supple- 
mented by  the  principle  of  cooperation.  It  is  an 
established  principle  in  every  form  of  commercial, 
religious,  or  educational  effort.  No  man.  North  or 
South,  shares  any  privilege  of  this  Hfe  for  which 
he  has  paid  all  the  cost.  How  many  of  us  who  go 
to  church  have  paid  our  full  share  of  the  cost  of 
what  we  get  ?  How  many  men  in  business  refuse 
to  be  benefited  by  policies  and  facilities  of  the  com- 
munity which,  in  their  value,  are  out  of  all  proportion 
to  what  these  men  have  paid  .-•  Who  goes  to  a  col- 
lege North  or  South  and  really  pays  there,  in  full, 
for  all  he  gets  .-*  He  may  pay  what  is  asked  or 
charged,  but  what  is  asked  or  charged  is  a  small 
element  of  the  cost  of  what  he  gets.  The  man 
who  goes  to  Yale  or  Harvard  University,  the  young 
woman  who  goes  to  Vassar,  is  directly  the  beneficiary 
of  buildings  and  endowments  which  philanthropy  has 


232  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

given  and  which  express  the  enduring  truth  that 
the  education  of  our  children,  whether  the  children 
of  the  rich  or  of  the  poor,  represents  a  great  task 
of  collective  consecration,  the  task  of  society  and  of 
humanity. 

Who  shall  presume,  therefore,  to  assert  that  the 
principle  of  cooperation  may  be  accepted  by  the 
sons  of  wealth,  but  that  it  may  not  be  accepted  by 
the  children  of  the  poor  ?  Surely,  if  any  children  in 
our  land  may  lay  rightful  and  honorable  claim  upon 
the  generous  interest  of  all  our  countrymen,  these 
are  the  children  of  our  rural  South.  The  children  of 
a  people  isolated  from  the  busy  life  of  trade,  often 
thinly  settled  upon  undeveloped  lands,  they  yet  repre- 
sent an  uncorrupted  stock,  full  of  native  vigor  and 
native  wit.  It  is  a  noble  wealth  which  awaits  us  in 
their  capacities  and  faculties.  The  South's  intense 
preoccupation  with  the  problem  of  the  negro  has 
largely  shut  these  people  out  from  the  care  and  the 
provisions  of  the  State.  For  this  preoccupation  and 
for  all  its  unfortunate  results,  our  whole  country  has 
been  responsible. 

The  Federal  Government  freed  the  slaves,  but  the 
Federal  Government  spent  little  indeed  in  fitting 
them  to  use  their  freedom  well.  Hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  ignorant  negro  men  were  introduced  to  the 
suffrage  without  any  introduction  into  the  capacity 
for  its  exercise,  and  the  South,  —  defeated,  impover- 
ished, desolate,  —  was  forced  to  assume  the  task  of 
providing  for  the  education  of  two  populations  out 
of  the  poverty  of  one. 

The  very  hypothesis  of  interv^ention  on  behalf  of 
the  negro,  as  has  also  been   previously  suggested, 


vn  A  NARRATIVE  OF   COOPERATION  233 

was  that  the  condition  of  the  black  man  was  the 
care  and  responsibility,  not  of  a  section,  but  of  the 
whole  country.  The  very  essence  of  the  theory 
of  emancipation  was  that  the  status  of  the  black 
man  was  the  charge  of  the  Nation.  Yet  the  issue 
of  emancipation  left  the  negro,  in  his  helplessness, 
at  the  threshold  of  the  South.  The  South,  with 
peculiar  heroism,  has  risen  to  that  responsibility.  For 
one  dollar  contributed  for  his  education  by  philan- 
thropy from  the  North,  four  dollars  have  been  con- 
tributed through  taxation  from  the  South.  The  negro 
has  shared  this  burden,  but  his  vast  numbers,  his 
great  needs,  and  his  low  productive  capacity  have 
necessarily  reduced  the  amount  which  the  South 
could  expend  upon  her  white  children. 

The  utter  impossibility,  to  the  impoverished  South,  ^ 
of  speedily  securing  the  negro's  educational  develop- 
ment, made  the  thought  of  his  political  power  an  all- 
absorbing  anxiety.  From  this  preoccupation  of  our 
public  interest  (largely  caused,  as  I  have  said,  by  the 
neglect  of  the  freedmen  by  the  Federal  Government) 
the  chief  sufferers  were  the  white  children  of  the 
masses  of  our  rural  population.  That  they  have  so 
suffered  may  be  called  the  fault  of  the  South ;  yet  it 
is  also  the  fault  of  that  negligence  of  all  our  coun- 
trymen through  which  the  South  with  inadequate 
resources  has  been  largely  left  to  bear  alone  a 
national  burden  and  to  discharge  a  national  responsi- 
bility. When,  therefore,  the  wealth  of  our  common 
country,  North  or  South,  generously  invests  its  reve- 
nues in  the  education  of  the  children  of  these  Southern 
States,  I  do  not  call  it  the  extension  of  "  charity  "  ; 
I  venture  to  call  it  the  acceptance  of  obligation. 


234  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

This  is  the  obligation  which  was  so  nobly  assumed 
by  the  founder  of  the  Peabody  Fund,  —  a  fund  left 
by  a  Northern  man  for  the  educational  needs  of 
white  and  black,  a  fund  which  has  for  these  thirty 
years  —  through  the  South's  glad  and  faithful  use  of 
it  —  put  forever  beyond  question  not  only  the  accept- 
ability of  educational  philanthropy  at  the  South,  but 
the  practical  wisdom  of  the  comprehensive  policy  for 
which  it  stands. 

There  are  many  who  see,  therefore,  in  this  educa- 
tional situation  at  the  South  a  challenge  to  the  wisest 
and  deepest  forces  of  a  national  patriotism.  This, 
however,  is  no  mere  question  of  the  duty  of  the 
North  to  the  South.  A  similar  situation  in  New 
England  or  the  West  should  arouse  a  like  response 
from  South  as  well  as  North.  It  is  a  question  of  the 
duty  of  the  Nation  to  the  children  of  the  Nation.  Our 
conditions,  as  I  have  said,  are  those  of  a  rural  popula- 
tion thinly  settled  upon  undeveloped  lands.  May  I 
again  recall  some  of  the  peculiar  phenomena  of  its 
distribution } 

"  Let  us  turn  to  the  figures  of  the  last  census. 
The  one  State  of  Massachusetts,  as  we  have  seen, 
has  20  cities  of  over  25,000  inhabitants.  The  10 
States  south  of  Virginia,  Kentucky,  and  Missouri, 
with  an  area  85  times  as  great  have  only  19,  and  the 
aggregate  population  of  the  Massachusetts  cities  ex- 
ceeds that  of  the  latter  by  417,000. 

"Again,  Massachusetts  has  no  communities  of 
over  4000  inhabitants,  with  an  aggregate  population 
of  2,437,994.  Her  entire  population  is  2,805,346,  so 
that  the  number  in  smaller  places  is  but  366,352. 

"These  10  Southern  States  have  altogether  only 


VII  A  NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION  235 

146  communities  of  this  rank,  with  an  aggregate 
population  of  2,148,262.  But  the  total  population 
of  these  10  States  is  17,121,481,  so  that  the  number 
dwelling  in  places  smaller  than  towns  of  4000  inhabit- 
ants is  14,972,738,  as  contrasted  with  366,352. 

"By  comparison  with  the  census  of  1890  we  may 
see  the  trend  of  population.  During  the  ten  years 
from  1890  to  1900  the  population  of  Massachusetts 
increased  566,399,  and  the  increase  in  her  no  large 
places  was  551,555-  In  the  10  Southern  States,  the 
total  increase  was  3,071,276,  of  which  only  505,781 
was  in  their  146  cities. 

"Outside  of  the  larger  places  Massachusetts  in- 
creased only  14,844;  these  10  States  of  the  South 
increased  their  population  outside  of  their  cities  of 
this  size,  by  2,565,495.  Massachusetts  people  live 
in  cities  and  the  growth  is  there.  Southern  people 
live  in  the  country  and  are  to  do  so  in  the  future. 
Only  a  small  part  live  in  communities  of  even  1000 
inhabitants.  The  608  places  of  this  size  or  larger 
contain  but  3,029,000,  while  14,090,000  remain  for 
the  strictly  rural  population.  This  is  for  the  10 
most  southern  States.  If  we  add  Maryland,  Vir- 
ginia, and  Kentucky,  the  number  will  rise  to  over 
17,000,000.  How  many  people  has  Massachusetts 
or  Rhode  Island  in  communities  of  less  than  1000 
inhabitants  .-•  So  few  as  to  be  hardly  appreciable  as 
an  influence  in  their  educational  policy. 

"  Now  it  is  a  serious  question  in  the  North,  how  to 
provide  good  schools  for  the  country.  Even  in 
Massachusetts  there  are  many  httle  places  where 
educational  opportunities  are  by  no  means  of  a  high 
order.     Else  why  has  Berkshire  County  415  native 


236  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

white  illiterate  men  of  over  twenty-one  years  of  age  ? 
One  county  in  northern  Maine  has  over  15  per  cent  of 
its  native  white  voters  who  cannot  read  and  write. 
New  England  has  not  yet  answered  in  her  own 
domain  the  question  of  education  for  her  rural  peo- 
ple. But  in  the  South  this  is  the  main  question. 
Southern  cities,  like  Northern  cities,  have  institutions 
which  are  their  pride ;  but  the  cities  are  few  in  the 
South  and  play  a  subordinate  part.  The  multitudes 
of  people  are  widely  scattered.  The  neglected  few 
in  Massachusetts  or  Maine  multiply  into  millions. 
To  make  the  situation  harder,  the  South  has  the  two 
races  to  complicate  everything,  two  peoples  so  unlike 
yet  bound  together  in  so  many  of  their  interests. 

"  The  Nation  has  yet  to  open  its  eyes  to  the  possi- 
bilities lying  dormant  in  these  great  Southern  States 
—  17,000,000  people  in  these  stretches  of  territory, 
none  of  whom  live  in  a  village  of  1000  inhabitants ! 
Ten  million  whites  of  our  native  American  stock, 
with  few  exceptions,  and  having  3,500,000  children 
of  school  age  usually  unprovided  with  good  schools ! 
Seven  million  negroes,  with  2,500,000  children,  and 
these  vitally  identified  in  their  rise  or  deterioration 
with  the  whites  about  them !  Who  grasps  the  scope 
of  these  figures,  and  comprehends  the  task  of  the 
men  who  have  to  wrestle  with  these  problems  ?  Do 
they  deserve  no  recognition  from  the  Nation }  Can 
the  Nation  in  a  prudent  reg,^rd  for  its  own  per- 
manence and  future  growth  afford  to  go  on  heedless 
of  what  is  done  or  not  done  in  this  great  section  of 
our  territorial  domain  ? 

"  There  is  no  end  of  the  bounty  bestowed  on  insti- 
tutions for  the  common  people  in  Northern   cities. 


Vil  A   NARRATIVE   OF  COOPERATION  237 

Why,  as  an  American,  should  I  be  more  interested 
in  the  children  of  Boston  or  of  New  Haven  than  in 
those  of  the  Carolinas  and  Georgia  ?  Who  are  the 
children  of  Boston  ?  Sixty-seven  per  cent  of  them 
are  of  parentage  from  beyond  the  sea.  Eighty  per 
cent  of  the  children  of  New  York  are  of  such  parent- 
age, and  the  story  is  the  same  for  other  great  cities  — 
Cleveland,  Chicago,  San  Francisco.  More  than  three- 
quarters  of  their  people  are  of  foreign  antecedents : 
Irish,  Germans,  French,  Italians,  Hungarians,  Poles, 
Russians,  Armenians,  Chinese. 

"  Not  that  I  would  disparage  the  beneficent  minis- 
tries of  education  for  any  of  these.  It  is  all  an  occa- 
sion of  joy.  I  only  speak  of  what  we  are  doing  for 
them  to  emphasize  what  we  ought  to  do  for  those  of 
our  own  blood.  It  was  the  apostle  to  the  Gentiles, 
engaged  with  all  his  might  in  efforts  for  the  people 
of  other  races,  who  wrote  :  '  If  any  provideth  not  for 
his  own,  and  especially  his  own  household,  he  hath 
denied  the  faith  and  is  worse  than  an  infidel.'  And 
so,  to-day,  our  interest  in  other  people  should  deepen 
our  sense  of  responsibility  for  those  who  are  our  near- 
est of  kin. 

"  Who  are  these  10,000,000  whites  of  the  South  .'' 
They  are  the  children  of  the  colonial  pioneers,  of  the 
soldiers  who  made  the  continental  army,  of  the  fathers 
who  established  the  Republic.  They  are  many  of 
them  descendants  from  a  New  England  ancestry  as 
well  as  from  settlers  of  Virginia  and  the  Carolinas. 
A  cursory  study  of  the  subject  leads  me  to  believe 
that  in  some  counties  of  Georgia  a  larger  proportion 
of  the  people  can  trace  back  through  some  line  to  a 
New  England  sire  than  in  the  city  of  Boston.     The 


238  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

cracker  is  of  the  same  blood  with  the  merchant  prince. 
This  is  to  be  seen  in  their  very  names.  The  people, 
North  and  South,  are  one,  in  features  and  in  native 
force,  cherishing  common  religious  beliefs  and  con- 
serving the  immemorial  traditions  of  freedom  and 
independence. 

"  What  is  due  from  the  prosperity  of  the  great 
cities  of  New  England,  New  York,  and  Pennsylvania 
to  their  kinsfolk  in  the  rural  South  .''  This  is  only  a 
new  direction  to  a  very  old  question.  For  a  full  hun- 
dred years  these  cities  have  generously  recognized 
their  obHgations  to  their  own  children  as  they  went 
to  Ohio,  Michigan,  and  all  the  region  beyond  to  the 
Pacific  Coast.  What  academy  or  college  was  planted 
anywhere  in  these  states  during  their  pioneer  days 
that  was  not  helped  from  the  older  and  wealthier 
communities  of  the  East .-'  We  see  the  results  to-day 
in  the  whole  life  of  the  Northwest."  ^ 

Our  Southern  States  must  look  with  "larger  and 
more  active  confidence  to  the  resources  of  local  taxa- 
tion, and  yet  the  conditions  which  have  been  here 
outlined  possess  indeed  a  national  significance  and 
should  challenge  a  national  response.  The  child  in 
Alabama  is  not  the  child  of  Alabama  alone.  Our 
children  —  let  me  again  suggest — are  the  Nation's 
children.  In  their  potential  citizenship  lie  the  social 
and  political  forces  which  are  to  have  a  part  in  the 
making  of  their  country's  government,  in  the  shaping 
of  their  country's  destiny.     Yet  there  is  reason  for 

1  Quoted  from  George  S.  Dickerman,  New  Haven,  Connecticut,  — 
one  of  the  wisest  and  most  conservative  of  the  Northern  students  of 
Southern  conditions.  Further  statistics  as  to  the  density  and  the  dis- 
tribution of  population  will  be  found  in  Table  VH  of  the  Appendix, 
p.  304,  columns  2  and  3. 


VII  A  NARRATIVE  OF   COOPERATION  239 

reflection  in  a  startling  contrast  to  which  the  records 
of  our  government  will  point  us.  The  child  of  Alaska 
is  the  subject  of  the  Nation's  considerate  provision. 
He  is  not  in  any  immediate  sense  a  potential  voter. 
Yet  in  Alaska  the  expenditure  upon  the  children  of 
the  Nation  —  though  60  per  cent  of  them  are  the 
children  of  the  Eskimo — is  annually  ^17.78  per 
capita  of  the  enrolment.  The  children  of  Alabama 
are  not  the  subject  of  a  national  provision,  and  the 
expenditure  in  Alabama  per  capita  of  the  pupils  in 
average  attendance  is  now  annually  1^4.41.  For  the 
child  of  the  Nation  in  Alaska  an  annual  investment 
of  $17.78,  actually  paid  in  part,  though  indirectly, 
by  the  people  of  Alabama ;  —  for  the  child  of  the 
Nation  in  Alabama  an  annual  investment  of  1^4.41  — 
though  the  child  of  Alabama  represents  in  his  grow- 
ing and  eager  life  the  potential  electorate  of  the 
richest  and  noblest  land  in  history. 

We  may  well  be  grateful  for  every  dollar  that  is 
being  expended  upon  the  children  of  our  territories. 
I  also  know  the  explanations  with  which  some  would 
attempt  to  modify  the  appalling  contrast  which  I 
have  cited.  But  when  we  see  what  our  great  gov- 
ernment can  spend  and  what  this  government  can 
compass  when  it  tries,  how  insistently  and  success- 
fully it  can  find  needs  to  meet  and  tasks  to  accom- 
plish from  the  Eskimo  to  the  Filipino,  and  from  Porto 
Rico  to  Guam,  has  not  the  time  fully  come  to  look 
straight  and  clear  before  us  to  the  home  acre  of  our 
own  undeveloped  citizenship  .'*  It  is  well  to  aid  and 
to  bless  the  governed.  We  shall  not  fail  to  do  so  if 
we  have  something  of  a  care  for  those  who  are  going 
to  do  the  governing.    No  rule  will  ever  be  wiser  than 


240  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

the  rulers,  and  no  republic  can  be  freer  than  its  own 
people.  To  enlarge  the  lot  and  to  increase  the  inspira- 
tions of  the  children  of  these  United  States,  North 
and  South  and  East  and  West,  is,  therefore,  not  a 
gratuitous  charity :  it  is  not  merely  the  obligation  of 
one  section  to  another ;  it  is  the  responsibility  of  the 
Nation  to  its  world-influence  as  well  as  to  its  citizen- 
ship ;  it  is  the  supreme  duty  of  our  national  capacities 
and  of  our  national  self-interest. 

There  have  been  objections  to  any  policy  of  "fed- 
eral aid."  Unquestionably  such  a  policy  might  take 
objectionable  forms.  With,  however,  the  safeguard- 
ing of  the  principle  of  self-help  and  with  a  broad  and 
satisfactory  recognition  of  the  principle  of  local 
administration,  such  a  policy  would  seem  to  be  as 
commendable  as  it  would  be  effective.  Nor  should 
such  a  policy  rest  upon  the  merely  local  or  sectional 
necessities  of  the  South ;  it  should  be  national  in 
its  whole  conception.  Representing  a  constructive 
policy  of  the  State,  it  should  be  available  throughout 
our  country  wherever  the  illiteracy  of  the  individual 
county  rises  beyond  a  fixed  percentage;  — wherever, 
in  other  words,  the  standard  of  American  citizenship 
is  threatened  by  the  unusual  massing  of  ignorant  or 
untutored  life. 

And  yet  it  should  not  be  a  policy  of  constraint. 
Federal  assistance  should  not  be  forced  upon  the  un- 
willing, for  under  such  conditions  the  county  would 
certainly  be  averse  to  the  acceptance  of  the  necessary 
terms  of  aid,  and  the  appropriation  —  when  given  — 
would  not  receive  sympathetic  or  effective  adminis- 
tration. But  where  the  county,  through  its  own  peo- 
ple or  its  own  authorities,  makes  request,  and  where 


VII  A  NARRATIVE  OF  COOPERATION  241 

the  county  meets  the  conditions  of  self-help,  the  gen- 
eral government  should  be  free  to  extend  its  practical 
cooperation.  The  labor  of  the  schools  is  labor  for  a 
citizenship  which  is  national  as  well  as  local.  Igno- 
rance in  America  cannot  be  fenced  off  into  negligible 
provinces  of  life  and  interest.  Though  the  Nation 
neglect  its  ignorance,  ignorance  will  not  neglect  the 
Nation.  It  thinks,  it  hates,  it  drags  down  —  by  crude 
and  wasteful  work  —  the  standard  of  intelligent  and 
effective  labor  ;  ignorance  helps  to  make  others  igno- 
rant, its  poverty  helps  to  make  others  poor ;  it  votes  ; 
and,  because  it  votes,  it  creates  the  perennial  oppor- 
tunity of  the  demagogue  and  an  ever  attendant  peril 
of  the  State.  There  are  in  the  United  States  to-day 
more  than  6,000,000  of  people  who  cannot  read  and 
write,  among  them  nearly  2,300,000  of  illiterate  men 
of  voting  age,  and,  sadder  still,  more  than  2,600,000 
of  illiterate  adult  women  —  possible  mothers  of  our 
citizenship. 

Shall  a  Nation  which  waged  a  tragic  war  over  the 
issues  involved  in  the  formal  emancipation  of  its 
slaves,  pause  before  the  problem  of  that  real  emanci- 
pation which  finds  its  argument  and  its  appeal  in  the 
presence  of  every  ignorant  and  ineffective  life  .-'  The 
freedom  to  possess  one's  self  is,  for  white  men  or 
for  black  men,  by  no  means  all  the  battle.  The 
freedom  to  possess  one's  self  holds  little  of  security 
or  joy  till  it  is  followed  by  at  least  some  measure  of 
the  freedom  of  knowledge  and  some  share  in  the  free- 
dom of  training.  Life  without  fitness  for  life  is  hardly 
happiness,  and  work  without  fitness  for  work  is  almost 
slavery.  Even  if  there  should  first  be  necessary  an 
amendment  to  the  national  Constitution,  what  more 


242  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

sacred  dogma  could  stand  in  the  organic  law  of  a 
modern  democracy  than  a  provision  according  at 
least  the  opportunities  of  elementary  knowledge  and 
elementary  training  to  every  child  of  the  land  ? 

As  for  the  South,  there  are  those  who  tell  us  that 
she  would  object  to  "  outside  aid."  The  apprehen- 
sion is  theoretic.  That  the  South  would  object  —  as 
other  sections  and  localities  would  object —  to  a  policy 
of  enforced  relief,  is  true.  That  the  South  —  what- 
ever the  course  of  her  political  representatives  in  the 
past  —  would  now  oppose  such  a  policy  as  I  have 
attempted  to  suggest  is  altogether  incredible.  In 
substance,  she  has  accepted  it.  The  revenues  of  the 
Peabody  Fund,  a  fund  given  in  1867  by  a  citizen  of 
Massachusetts,  have  been  accepted,  freely,  gladly, 
gratefully,  and  for  more  than  thirty  years,  by  the  pub- 
lic school  authorities  of  every  Southern  State.  The 
educational  funds  represented  by  the  Slater  Board 
and  the  General  Education  Board  have  also  been 
accepted,  and  —  like  those  of  the  Peabody  Board  — 
have  been  wholly  inadequate  to  meet  the  cogent  and 
overwhelming  appeals  from  practically  every  quarter. 
The  agricultural  and  mechanical  colleges  of  the  States 
are  directly  the  creation  of  federal  appropriations, 
appropriations  based  upon  the  values  of  public  lands, 
and  now  everywhere  cordially  accepted  and  utilized 
in  the  educational  policy  of  the  South. 

Is  it  urged  that  these  revenues  belong  in  part  to 
the  States  themselves  ?  —  that  they  hardly  represent 
the  acceptance  of  "  outside  aid  "  .-'  It  is  true.  It  is 
also  true  that,  in  the  strict  analysis  of  the  expression, 
there  is  no  such  thing  within  the  whole  domain  of  our 
national  administration  as  "outside  aid"  —  nor  can 


VII  A  NARRATIVE   OF  COOPERATION  243 

there  be.  If  the  South  asks  for  a  federal  pubhc 
building,  it  asks  no  "  charity  "  ;  if  any  section  of  the 
South  asks  for  a  special  mail-train,  it  asks  no  "  out- 
side aid."  For  the  South  is  not  one  land  and  the 
Nation  another.  The  South  is  within  the  Nation  — 
may  make  its  legitimate  requisitions  upon  the  national 
expenditure  because  toward  that  expenditure  it  makes 
its  ample  contributions.  No  section  of  the  Nation 
receives,  proportionately,  so  little  of  the  national  reve- 
nues. The  South  is  predominantly  agricultural.  In 
the  vast  sums  collected  in  the  form  of  a  protective 
tariff,  but  contributed  indirectly  by  American  con- 
sumption —  Northern  and  Southern  —  to  the  upbuild- 
ing of  our  country's  manufacturing  interests,  the  South 
has  had  little  share.  She  has  contributed  her  portion 
toward  the  1^140,000,000  which  the  country  annually 
distributes  through  the  national  pensions.^  Yet  these 
revenues  are  received  and  expended,  for  the  most 
part,  within  the  States  of  the  North  and  West.  I  do 
not  call  in  question  the  principle  of  pension  relief.  It 
is  of  some  economic  significance,  however,  that  the 
fiscal  policies  and  the  relief  provisions  of  the  govern- 
ment should  operate  chiefly  to  the  advantage  of  the 
sections  outside  the  South.  This  is  not  in  itself  a 
reason  why  pensions  should  be  discontinued  or  why 
the  tariff  should  be  readjusted.  And  yet  it  is  a  rea- 
son why  there  need  be  no  sensitiveness  on  the  part 
of  the  South  if  the  South  should  be  included  in  a 
policy  of  federal  aid  in  relation  to  public  education. 

1  Since  1893  the  cost  of  the  pension  system  per  capita  of  the  whole 
population  has  gradually  fallen,  but  in  that  year  this  cost  was  ^2.44. 
The  expenditure  for  public  education,  per  capita  of  the  whole  popula- 
tion, was  in  the  same  year  ^2.48. 


244  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

But  even  if  it  were  otherwise,  no  section  or  State 
could  well  hesitate  to  receive  and  use  —  under  a  wise 
and  equitable  system  —  national  revenues  appropri- 
ated for  national  ends.  For  these  revenues  are  them- 
selves a  contribution  from  the  people  of  the  States. 
The  South  may  well  receive  some  portion  of  what 
the  South  has  given.  The  Nation's  resources,  I  may 
repeat,  are  not  the  vague  revenues  of  a  mysterious 
paternalism  outside  the  Northern  or  Southern  States. 
"  Outside  aid  "  is  an  impossible  misnomer.  In  the 
United  States  of  America  there  is  no  "  outside  "  :  nor 
can  there  be.  The  land  is  one  land ;  and  a  democ- 
racy which  is  everywhere  opening  to  its  people  an 
equality  of  political  obligation  must,  in  the  interest 
of  government  itself,  provide  for  a  fairer  distribution 
of  educational  opportunity. 

One  of  our  greatest  Presidents  has  said  that  it  is 
"  the  duty  of  the  people  to  support  the  government, 
not  of  the  government  to  support  the  people."  Like 
many  an  epigram,  its  truth  is  wholly  dependent  upon 
its  context  and  its  application.  That  the  expression 
should  sometimes  have  been  quoted  in  criticism  of 
the  policy  of  federal  appropriations  for  public  edu- 
cation brings  us  an  explicit  perversion  of  its  intended 
sense.  And  yet  even  here  I  would  not  hesitate  to 
hold  the  maxim  sound.  For  as  thus  applied,  the 
saying  may  but  enforce  the  truth  that  when  govern- 
ment educates  it  supports  itself.  What  the  State 
appropriates  for  the  education  of  its  people,  it  appro- 
i  priates  not  to  their  support  but  to  the  support  of 
;  those  stabilities  of  mind  and  temper,  those  habits  and 
'  efficiencies  of  the  popular  life,  which  make  of  democ- 
racv  a  rational   and  consistent  order,  an  institution 


VII  A  NARRATIVE   OF   COOPERATION  245 

combining  flexibility  with  permanence  and  force  with 
freedom.  When  the  people,  through  their  govern- 
ment, educate  themselves,  they  educate  themselves 
for  government. 

Ill 

The  movement  represented  by  the  Southern  and 
General  Education  Boards  —  as  already  stated  —  is  in 
no  sense  formally  identified  with  the  proposal  for 
national  aid.  And  yet  this  movement,  however  un- 
consciously, has  perhaps  contributed  to  that  proposal. 
It  has  brought  into  the  national  mind,  it  has  brought 
into  the  national  heart,  and  has  laid  upon  the  national 
conscience,  the  needs  of  the  rural  child,  —  the  child 
not  only  of  the  rural  South  but  of  the  North  and  West 
as  well.  And,  for  one,  I  am  glad  that  it  has  done  so.  It 
is  apparent  that  while  philanthropy  may  appropriately 
serve  to  make  at  certain  points  its  demonstrations  of 
method,  may  touch  here  and  there  with  inspiring 
force  a  locality,  an  institution,  or  an  individual,  and  so 
may  turn  failure  into  success,  yet  the  task  is  too 
appalling  in  its  complexity  and  its  magnitude  for  the 
resources  or  the  administrations  of  private  bodies. 
These  organizations  must  continue  —  they  have 
worked  out  all  the  essential  policies  of  a  wise  and 
constructive  programme  —  and  their  field  will  remain 
even  after  the  cooperation  of  the  national  government 
is  secured.  But  it  is  to  our  national  and  collective 
interest,  as  found  and  expressed  through  our  national 
legislature,  that  we  may  look  henceforth  for  a  clearer 
and  juster  perception  of  the  needs  of  our  rural  life. 
How  long  we  may  have  to  wait,  no  man  can  say ; 
but  in  this  day,  not  of  socialism,  but  of  vivid  social 


246  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  CHAP. 

obligations,  the  stars  in  their  courses  seem  to  fight 
for  those  who  believe  that  the  function  of  govern- 
ment is  not  merely  the  function  of  a  national  police, 
is  not  merely  negative,  corrective,  regulative,  but  posi- 
tive and  affirmative. 

In  the  meanwhile  we  may  rejoice  that  there  are 
those  who,  under  the  pure  impulses  of  a  generous 
patriotism,  are  trying  to  aid  in  doing  personally  what 
the  Nation  has  not  done  officially.  While  it  is  true 
that  the  Nation  has  a  duty  to  its  citizenship,  these 
are  also  proving  that  a  true  citizenship  has  a  duty  to 
the  Nation.  Every  true  gift  of  a  genuine  philan- 
thropy represents  the  thought  of  what  is  due  not  only 
to  the  child  but  to  our  country.  Such  a  gift  is  the 
acceptance  of  the  holiest  and  deepest  obligation  of 
the  citizen  to  the  State.  It  is  his  effort  to  add  to  the 
forces  by  which  it  rebuilds  and  reconstitutes  its  life. 

And  yet,  let  us  suppose  that  such  a  gift  were  made 
solely  for  the  child's  sake,  were  indeed  that  real  thing 
which  the  world  calls  charity,  —  not  the  charity  of 
condescension,  but  the  charity  of  a  reverent  and 
tender  love,  the  motive  of  that  fine,  ennobling,  human 
grace  which  puts  a  man's  strength  at  the  service  of 
his  friend,  which  puts  God's  power  at  the  service  of 
those  who  pray,  which  always  places  and  always  will 
place  the  whole  world's  wisdom  and  goodness  and 
greatness  at  the  service  of  a  little  child,  —  who  then 
will  care  to  stand,  as  a  forbidding  and  darkening 
barrier,  between  charity  and  the  children  .-* 

May  I  close  this  chapter,  therefore,  with  a  story ; 
not  an  "  historic  illustration,"  but  a  true  story  out  of 
life  .-*  It  illustrates,  as  in  a  simple,  human  parable, 
that  truth  of  a  cooperative  and  cooperating  patriotism 


VII  A  NARRATIVE  OF   COOPERATION  247 

upon  which  we  have  dwelt  so  long.  It  is  a  story  of 
one  of  the  children  of  Alabama.  As  its  meaning 
comes  home  to  us,  we  may  well  leave  the  mood  of 
argument  and  abstraction  for  that  mood  of  tender 
and  personal  affection  which  makes  the  deeper  nerve 
of  every  civic  cause,  of  every  social  faith. 

Some  twenty  years  ago,  in  one  of  the  smaller 
cities  of  Alabama,  there  was  born  to  an  honored  Con- 
federate soldier  and  his  noble  wife,  a  little  daughter. 

For  a  few  brief  months  she  dwelt  among  them  as 
a  little  presence  of  bodily  happiness  and  responsive 
charm.  Clear  eyes,  lighted  with  the  strange  wisdom 
of  innocent  babyhood ;  soft  prattle,  making  audible 
her  rapturous  content  with  the  wonder  of  this  great, 
kindly,  befriending,  human  world ;  and  then,  within 
the  bitter  fate  of  a  few  swift  hours,  there  came  the 
desolating  change. 

It  was  not  death  ;  it  was  that  tragic  compromise  by 
which  life  comes  back  from  death,  leaving  its  laurels 
in  death's  hands,  —  life  without  the  seals  and  sym- 
bols of  our  living  world,  —  life  without  sight  or  hear- 
ing or  utterance.  Through  the  tender  body  of  the 
child  there  had  swept  a  fever,  like  a  scourge  of  flame, 
that  left  her  forevermore  a  child  of  darkness  and  of 
silence. 

The  fever  did  not  take  her  from  her  father,  her 
mother,  her  friends,  her  loved  and  happy  world ;  but 
from  her  it  took  —  all.  For  seven  long  years,  —  deaf, 
speechless,  blind,  she  knew  no  converse  with  any 
human  or  living  thing. 

You  may  teach  the  deaf  through  the  ministry  of 
vision ;  you  may  instruct  the  blind  by  hearing  and  by 
speech,  but  when  the   blind   one  cannot  hear,  and 


248  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

when  the  deaf  cannot  see,  how  may  love  find  a  way  ? 
Dwelling  thus  in  a  silence  without  light,  in  a  night 
that  gave  back  to  her  no  earthly  or  heavenly  voice, 
the  child  lived  on,  her  prison  darkening  as  her  young 
heart  grew  older  in  its  warfare. 

And  then  on  a  wonderful  and  ever  memorable  day, 
there  came  another  change.  To  this  little  girl  in  her 
Southern  home  there  was  brought  one  who  found  a 
clew,  one  whose  patient  and  unwearied  labor,  whose 
brooding  insight,  found  at  last  a  symbol,  a  common 
term,  between  her  own  mind  and  Helen  Keller's  im- 
prisoned life.  Following  that  clew,  and  by  adding 
symbol  to  symbol  and  term  to  term,  the  devoted 
teacher  built  up  for  the  struggling  and  eager  child, 
upon  the  single  sense  of  touch,  a  language  ;  and 
that  language  has  unlocked  for  her  the  whole  vast, 
radiant  world  of  books  and  art  and  hope  and  truth 
and  love.  Helen  Keller,  now  a  successful  student  of 
Radcliffe  College  in  Harvard  University,  familiar 
with  five  of  the  great  literatures  of  our  civilization, 
shares  a  life  which,  though  still  deaf  and  still  sight- 
less, is  rich  in  human  interests  and  friendships.  Out 
of  the  dark  and  silent  prison-house  there  was  but  one 
door  into  the  glad  provinces  of  culture,  fellowship, 
and  light,  —  but  one  door,  and  her  teacher  found  for 
her  its  hidden  threshold,  opened  it,  led  her  forth,  and 
keeps  her  hand  in  hers  to-day  ;  —  the  hand  no  longer 
of  a  sad,  baffled,  despairing  child,  but  of  a  useful  and 
happy  woman. 

Was  it  worth  doing?  Was  it  worth  permitting? 
That  teacher's  hand  was  the  hand  of  a  wise,  patient, 
tender,  devoted  woman  of  the  North.  The  means 
that  have  made  possible  this  strange  and  beautiful 


Vll  A  NARRATIVE  OF  COOPERATION  249 

emancipation  have  come  largely  through  the  consid- 
erate aid  of  Northern  friends,  —  friends  who  forgot 
North  and  South  and  East  and  West  in  the  presence 
of  a  great,  saddening,  appeahng  calamity  of  our  hu- 
man life,  remembering  only  that  a  Uttle  child  in  need 
is  the  rightful  heir  of  all  that  this  world  holds. 

A  little  child  in  need,  —  the  child  in  its  helpless- 
ness, with  its  back  toward  the  darkness  and  the  si- 
lence, with  its  face  toward  a  day  dawning  over  the 
battle-ground  of  ideas,  of  institutions,  of  nations,  of 
men,  of  great,  naked,  furious,  relentless  destinies,  — 
clashing,  contending,  devouring,  till  the  doom  of 
God ;  the  child  facing  the  battle ;  the  child  in  a  de- 
mocracy, with  an  outlook  from  the  chariot  of  the 
King ;  the  child,  —  and  all  humanity  within  him.  There 
lies  the  constraining  motive,  the  fundamental  and  in- 
clusive motive,  of  all  the  educational  pohcies  of  Church 
or  State,  of  legislation  or  philanthropy,  —  the  child, 
in  whose  presence  sectionalisms  become  meaningless 
and  humanity  becomes  supreme. 

The  policy  of  education  may  be,  indeed,  a  policy 
of  national  or  local  self-interest.  But  the  self  of 
which  we  think  is  the  self -hood  of  our  future  —  the 
locality,  the  State,  the  Nation,  of  our  children.  Their 
hands  rule  us  while  we  work.  Toward  the  threshold 
of  their  enfranchisement  they  move  to-day,  through 
all  our  country,  out  of  the  valleys  of  silence  and  of 
darkness  —  hearts  breathing  toward  the  hills,  faces 
hfted  toward  the  light.  Their  souls  inherit  from  us 
all  things  but  the  strange  and  fatuous  passions  that 
divide  man  from  man.  Their  uplifted  hands  bear 
no  blood-stains  of  war.  Their  waiting  and  eager  lives 
know  nothing  of  factions  and  sections  and  nations. 


250  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chai'.  vii 

They  are  here,  they  are  ready,  and  the  world  is 
theirs. 

The  glory,  the  largess,  of  all  humanity  belongs 
to  every  one  of  them.  Just  as  no  man  can  prevent 
the  poetry  of  our  Lanier  from  speaking  to  the  child 
of  the  North,  just  as  no  man  can  prevent  the  music 
of  Longfellow  from  blessing  the  child  of  the  South, 
so  the  wealth  and  good  and  truth  of  all  belong  for- 
ever to  us  all. 

Education,  all  education,  is  but  philanthropy ;  and 
philanthropy  is  but  humanity  believing  in  itself  and 
in  its  God,  —  humanity,  with  its  hand  in  the  child's 
hand,  before  that  door  that  opens  ever  Eastward,  out 
of  the  world  of  the  helpless  and  silent  night  into  the 
world  of  the  far,  free  day  —  the  world  of  voices  and 
fellowship,  of  serious,  grave,  implacable  liberties,  of 
a  little  happiness,  of  much  duty  and  struggle  and 
patience,  and  —  if  God  will  —  an  honest  work  inspir- 
ing, sustaining,  contenting. 


CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY 


CHAPTER   VIII 

CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY 


Culture,  in  a  democracy,  is  the  aspiration  of  the 
many ;  and  a  democracy  is  to  culture  but  the  chal- 
lenge of  practical  occasions.  In  the  world  with 
which  we  have  now  to  do  culture  is  everybody's 
creed ;  and  democracy  is  everybody's  chance  to  put 
the  creed  to  work. 

Manifestly,  therefore,  culture  is  more  than  knowl- 
edge, just  as  democracy  means  more  than  a  form 
of  government.  We  need  not  pause  for  fixed  and 
ultimate  definitions.  We  have  no  sooner  fixed  them 
than  they  cease  to  be  ultimate.  Our  danger  lies  not 
in  the  descriptions  we  should  accept  so  much  as  in 
the  possible  truth  of  those  we  might  omit ;  for  all  are 
true.  Culture  —  in  a  broad  and  liberal  sense  —  is 
but  the  estate  of  the  human  mind  when  touched  by 
the  joy  of  achievement,  just  as  democracy  is  the 
rule  of  human  numbers  come  to  their  conscious 
power.  We  may  find  aspects  of  culture  in  the 
savage,  phases  of  democracy  in  the  Russias. 
Wherever  the  achievements  of  the  mind  are  pleas- 
urably  and  consciously  possessed,  we  have  the  begin- 
nings of  those  aristocracies  of  sentiment  and  of  those 
distinctions  of  feeling  which  have  builded  the  king- 
dom of  ideas.     Out  of    small   beginnings  has  come 

253 


254  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

the  reign  of  truth  and  the  authority  of  loveliness. 
And  wherever  human  multitudes  have  tasted  the 
consciousness  of  power,  of  power  in  their  own  right, 
we  have  the  v-ague  foreshadowings  of  a  government 
of  the  people.  Government,  however,  is  the  least  of 
the  forms  through  which  the  people  rule,  just  as 
scholastic  knowledge  is  the  least  of  the  offerings  of 
culture.  The  power  of  ideas  and  the  power  of  num- 
bers—  through  all  the  range  of  our  human  life  — 
act  and  react  upon  each  other.  Out  of  this  action 
and  reaction,  out  of  these  reciprocities  of  influence, 
what  may  we  say  as  to  the  obligation  of  culture  to 
democracy,  and  as  to  the  obligation  of  democracy  to 
culture .'' 

It  were  perhaps  a  simple  matter  to  discuss  such 
questions  merely  as  the  abstract  and  unrelated  ques- 
tions of  social  criticism.  But  such  inquiries,  for  an 
age  dominated  by  a  certain  imperious  sense  of  actu- 
ality, possess  an  inevitable  context.  They  fit  into 
given  scenes  and  touch  upon  living  issues.  It  would 
be  interesting  to  discuss  them  in  relation  to  the 
intellectual  habits  and  the  social  institutions  of 
China.  But  the  American  must  discuss  them  in 
America.  It  would  be  interesting  to  point  out  their 
significance  at  the  North,  to  trace  there  the  obligations 
of  the  educated  life  toward  the  deep  human  issues 
that  arise  in  the  struggle  between  labor  and  capital ; 
to  indicate  the  perils  there  of  a  crude  emotionalism 
upon  the  one  hand,  and  of  an  occasional  self- 
sufficiency  upon  the  other,  to  show,  upon  both  sides, 
the  survivals  of  tyranny  and  the  failure  of  the  fruits 
of  freedom,  the  negation  of  culture  by  the  cultivated 
and  the  rejection  of  democracy  among  the  multitude; 


vni  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCRACY  255 

but  the  citizen  of  the  South,  writing  from  within  the 
conditions  of  Southern  thought,  must  discuss  these 
questions  in  their  application  to  the  South. 

What,  then,  is  the  obHgation  of  democracy  to  cul- 
ture ?  First  of  all,  the  right  to  live.  The  obligation 
to  accord  to  the  educated  life  the  opportunities  of 
knowledge,  and  then  in  the  interest  of  democracy 
itself  to  permit  the  founding  and  extending  of  the 
prerogatives  of  intellectual  freedom.  Such  liberties 
are  far  more  familiar  to  the  South  than  the  world 
has  understood.  Recent  tests  of  the  principle  of 
academic  freedom,  at  the  University  of  Texas,  in 
Tennessee,  in  Virginia,  in  North  Carolina,  have  indi- 
cated that  the  South  has  not  altogether  failed  to 
keep  pace  with  the  broader  university  traditions. 
There  have  been  some  Southern  lapses,  and  there 
have  been  a  few,  at  least,  in  the  North  and  at  the 
West.  But  the  freedom  of  the  intellectual  life  is 
never  fully  measured  by  the  standard  or  the  prece- 
dents of  the  university,  nor  by  the  traditions  of 
journalistic  or  political  expression ;  nor  even  by  the 
truer  tests  of  literature.  Social  life  is  a  thing  of  vast 
complexity,  and  yet  a  thing  of  local  and  individual 
character.  A  civilization  has  many  ways  of  talking 
out  its  mind.  Its  way  may  be  wholly  different  from 
the  way  which  is  accepted  by  other  civilizations  and 
other  worlds ;  but  the  fact  that  its  method  of  expres- 
sion is  different  does  not  argue  that  it  is  without 
expression.  The  South  is  not  a  land  of  book-making ; 
it  is  so  essentially  and  predominantly  rural  that  it 
is  not  a  land  of  great  newspapers ;  it  has  been  so 
long  the  land  of  a  fixed  political  minority  that  it 
knows  little  of  the  clash  of  great  and  sincere  debate ; 


256  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

but  it  is  peculiarly  a  land  of  conversation.  The 
North  may  think  it  knows  something  of  conversation, 
but  the  North,  as  compared  with  the  South,  may  be 
said  never  to  have  enjoyed  a  conversation.  About 
the  village  courthouse,  within  the  hospitable  doors  of 
some  central  store,  in  the  office  of  the  local  daily  or 
weekly  paper,  or  —  above  all  —  in  the  leisurely  and 
genial  intercourse  around  the  fireside  in  winter  or 
on  the  inviting  porch  in  summer,  of  friend  with 
friends,  there  will  be  heard  a  conversation  which  in 
wit,  in  the  charm  and  force  of  its  illustrations,  and  in 
the  directness  and  freedom  of  its  criticism  is  not  sur- 
passed in  American  life  to-day. 

It  is  the  product  of  leisure,  of  a  world  without  haste, 
without  ruthless  preoccupations,  without  those  re- 
sources of  expression  and  of  interest  which  belong  to 
the  crowded  and  overweighted  existence  of  the  com- 
mercial city.  It  is,  moreover,  part  of  the  tradition  of 
the  Cavalier.  It  is  part  of  the  genius  of  climate,  and 
soil,  and  social  habit.  The  Southern  speaker  who 
addresses  a  Northern  audience  is  often  asked  where 
he  gets  his  "stories."  They  are  stories,  usually,  not 
only  with  humor  but  with  meaning.  He  hardly 
knows.  They  are  vivid,  inherited  possessions.  They 
have  come  down  to  him  from  a  land  in  which  conver- 
sation is  an  art,  and  in  which  it  is  not  mere  art  alone 
but  the  supreme  vehicle  of  social  criticism. 

That  this  vehicle  —  despite  its  individuality  and 
efficiency  —  is  increasingly  inadequate  must  be  evi- 
dent enough.  The  complexity  and  the  activities  of 
industrial  transformation  are  making  an  end  of  the 
old  leisure  and  of  the  old  possibilities  which  it  in- 
volved, and  are  thus  making  a  larger  demand  for  a 


VIII  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCRACY  257 

more  explicit  and  more  active  leadership  in  politics, 
in  the  press,  the  pulpit,  the  university.  This  leader- 
ship is  fast  appearing.  In  politics  it  will  probably  be 
longest  delayed  —  through  causes  as  operative  in  the 
North  as  in  the  South  —  and  yet  there  are  men  in 
the  political  life  of  the  South  who,  though  holding  no 
longer  the  centre  of  the  national  stage,  are  truly  the 
heirs  of  whatever  is  noblest  and  freest  in  the  pubHc 
service  of  their  country. 

The  press,  as  with  the  press  of  the  world  at  large, 
is  sometimes  chargeable  with  a  hysteria  and  a  per- 
versity which  are  the  despair  of  a  rational  hopeful- 
ness, and  yet  upon  the  really  vital  issues  in  the  life  of 
the  South  the  press  has  been  a  free  and  patriotic 
force.  What  newspapers  of  our  country  have  stood 
more  persistently  and  effectively  for  law  and  order 
than  the  Atlanta  Constitution,  the  Montgomery  Ad- 
vertiser, the  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat,  the  Ra- 
leigh News  and  Observer,  the  Charleston  News  and 
Courier — not  to  mention  a  score  of  others  whose 
course  has  been  as  honorable  ?  The  writer  has  exam- 
ined nearly  two  thousand  editorials  of  the  American 
press  on  the  subject  of  child  labor.  No  editorials 
have  been  comparable  to  those  of  the  South  in 
fulness  of  knowledge,  intensity  of  interest,  or  vigor 
and  directness  of  expression.  The  files  of  the  daily 
State  of  Columbia,  South  Carolina,  represent  for  a 
course  of  two  years  the  ablest  handling  of  a  human 
industrial  issue  that  our  country  has  known  since  the 
period  of  emancipation.  As  for  the  pulpit  of  the 
South,  a  popular  writer  has  charged  it  with  a  cow- 
ardly silence  in  relation  to  our  industrial  problems, 
and  has  intimated,  with  grotesque  inaptness,  that  the 


258  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  CHAP. 

child-labor  abuses  of  the  South  were  due  to  the 
complicity  of  the  Christian  clergy.  At  the  very 
time  when  this  criticism  was  written,  the  reform 
committees  in  charge  of  the  propaganda  for  protec- 
tive legislation  in  the  several  Southern  States  were, 
almost  without  exception,  headed  by  a  clergyman  of 
the  Christian  Church.  The  South  is  the  subject  of  a 
general  national  interest,  but  it  is  not  the  subject, 
unfortunately,  of  a  general  national  information. 
There  have  been  clergymen  who  from  motives  good 
or  bad  have  not  aided  sympathetically  in  the  press- 
ing of  industrial  reforms.  But,  upon  the  whole,  the 
clergy  of  the  South  rang  nobly  true  upon  that  es- 
pecial issue,  and  they  spoke  from  individual  pulpits 
and  through  the  action  of  church  assemblies  with  a 
freedom  and  a  vigor  which  the  clergy  of  the  North  — 
upon  like  issues  —  have  not  surpassed. 

The  universities  of  the  South  have  shared  in  the 
common  national  struggle  for  the  freedom  of  the 
teacher,  and  while  much  remains  to  be  accomplished, 
the  conflict  —  as  has  been  suggested  —  has  not  been 
without  its  signal  triumphs.  Another,  and  yet  a 
cognate,  struggle  for  the  raising  of  academic  stand- 
ards has  been  quite  as  inspiring ;  and  the  leadership 
of  men  like  Kirkland  of  Vanderbilt,  Wiggins  of  Se- 
wanee,  Denny  of  Washington  and  Lee,  and  Alder- 
man of  Tulane,  is  achieving  definite  and  permanent 
results.  More  important  still  are  those  forces  of 
popular  leadership  which  —  through  the  whole  domain 
of  our  Southern  States  —  have  issued  from  our  uni- 
versities for  the  upbuilding  of  the  common  schools. 
To  the  support  of  popular  education,  to  the  enlarge- 
ment of   the  life,  the  training,  the  freedom,  of   the 


viil  CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY  259 

masses  of  the  people  these  men  have  unselfishly 
dedicated  capacity  and  energy  and  labor,  and  in  an 
educational  revival  which  has  become  one  of  the 
most  significant  movements  of  our  century  they  are 
helping  to  make  of  our  democracy  not  merely  a  theory 
of  politics  but  a  civic  creed. 

And  yet  with  explicit  appreciation  of  the  vigor  and 
the  freedom  of  the  leadership  which  now  exists  —  in 
politics,  the  press,  the  pulpit,  the  university  —  it  is 
obvious  that  the  conditions  which  have  made  its 
existence  difficult  have  reduced  its  volume  and  will 
continually  threaten  its  efficiency.  The  South  pos- 
sesses a  peculiar  "  problem  "  —  bequeathed  to  it  under 
tragic  conditions  and  continued  under  every  circum- 
stance which  might  increase  its  perplexities  and  its 
burdens.  The  political  solution  which  was  attempted 
by  the  North  was  apparently  involved  —  by  those 
who  undertook  it  —  with  a  number  of  unwise  and 
unsympathetic  methods  in  negro  education  and  with 
what  was  popularly  regarded  as  an  experiment  in 
"social  equality."  The  three  proposals  —  political, 
educational,  social  —  thus  became  identified,  how- 
ever mistakenly,  in  the  popular  imagination  of  the 
South,  and  each  phase  of  Northern  activity  became 
so  intimately  associated  with  the  other  —  especially 
in  the  thought  of  the  ignorant  —  that  the  task  of 
clarification  has  seemed  almost  impossible.  To  the 
baffling  confusion  of  the  situation  was  added  the  fact 
that  the  responsible  interest  of  the  South  was  largely 
ignored  and —  upon  the  assumption  that  the  South's 
opposition  to  the  freedman's  social  and  political 
assimilation  involved  the  South's  opposition  to  his 
every  right  —  the  problem  was  assumed  to  be  wholly 


26o  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

a  problem  of  the  North.  Beneath  the  North's  seri- 
ous and  rightful  sense  of  obligation  the  South  saw- 
only  an  intolerant  "interference."  Beneath  the 
South 's  natural  suspicion  and  solicitude  the  North 
saw  only  an  undiscriminating  enmity  to  herself  and 
to  the  negro.  Both  interpretations  were  unfounded. 
The  South,  however,  passed  from  a  mood  of  compar- 
ative indifference  to  a  mood  of  active  and  unyielding 
criticism,  a  criticism  which  expressed  —  in  one  form 
or  another  —  the  central  contention  that  the  problem 
had  never  been  the  North's  and  must  always  remain 
the  South's ;  that  having  attempted  its  solution  upon 
the  basis  of  universal  suffrage,  and,  in  1876,  having 
confessed  its  failure  by  the  withdrawal  of  its  military 
support  of  the  reconstruction  governments,  the  North 
was  bound  to  remand  the  problem  to  the  Southern 
States.  In  the  stricter  sense,  the  problem  is  not  the 
South's  or  the  North's,  but  the  Nation's ;  and  yet,  as 
has  been  suggested,  its  local  home  does  lie  within  the 
South,  and  the  ultimate  forces  of  its  solution  must 
therefore  be  predominantly  Southern  in  their  genius 
and  environment.  In  any  event,  it  is  evident  to-day 
that  the  popular  forces  of  American  life  are  only  too 
ready  to  leave  the  question  —  in  its  deepest  issues  — 
with  the  people  of  the  Southern  States ;  and  there- 
fore, to-day,  as  never  before,  the  negro  problem  is,  in 
fact,  the  South's. 

In  an  older  period,  when  the  question  was  within 
the  physical  as  well  as  the  moral  control  of  alien  and 
unsympathetic  forces,  it  was  natural  that  the  attitude 
of  Southern  thought  should  have  been  an  attitude  of 
protest,  and  that  its  criticism  should  have  been  chiefly 
negative  and  corrective.     That  period  made  men  nat- 


VIII  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCRACY  261 

urally  resentful  of  "  advice,"  naturally  suspicious  and 
contemptuous  of  "  theories."  It  was  the  period  of 
reconstruction,  —  a  period  of  much  administrative 
sordidness,  but  also  of  memorable  heroism  among 
numbers  of  the  men  and  women  who  undertook  the 
freedmen's  initiation  into  the  experience  of  the  citi- 
zen. Its  successes,  however,  were  hidden,  deep,  not 
easily  observable ;  its  blunders  were  observable  and 
conspicuous.  It  was  to  have  been  expected,  therefore, 
that  in  the  presence  of  palpable  mistakes  which  it 
was  powerless  to  rectify,  the  mind  of  the  South  should 
have  become  reticent  or  indifferent  or  occasionally 
cynical,  and  that  its  tendency  to  deal  with  the  whole 
question  negatively  rather  than  positively  should  have 
become  an  established  intellectual  habit. 

But  that  period  has  passed,  and  with  the  passing 
of  that  period  there  arises  a  larger  and  clearer  need 
for  the  contribution  to  this  question,  as  to  every  ques- 
tion of  the  South,  of  a  positive  and  constructive 
leadership,  —  a  leadership  no  longer  reactionary  or 
obstructive,  but,  while  awed  by  responsibility,  equipped 
with  learning,  vital  with  suggestion,  altogether  un- 
trammelled in  utterance,  and  therefore  consciously 
and  confidently  free. 

It  is  in  the  interest  of  the  South  herself  that  such 
a  leadership  —  not  in  one  profession  or  one  class  but 
in  all  —  should  be  more  largely  developed  and  sus- 
tained. Dark  indeed  must  be  the  fate  of  any  land  if 
compelled  to  approach  the  solution  of  any  significant 
problem  of  its  life  with  its  lips  sealed  and  its  reason 
bound.  In  the  interest  of  her  own  solution  of  her 
own  problems,  the  South  will,  of  necessity,  assume 
that  her  policies  are  not  to  be  determined  from  the 


262  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

Standpoint  of  the  ignorant  or  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  crude  devices  of  party  tactics,  but  from  the 
standpoint  of  her  best  life  —  desiring  the  total  good. 
For  the  very  reason  that  her  problems  are  so  diffi- 
cult and  so  acute,  the  South  is  entitled  to  the  larg- 
est knowledge,  and  to  the  freest,  clearest  thinking  of 
which  her  sons  are  capable.  For  the  reason  that  the 
problem  is  so  largely  committed  to  the  South,  the  life 
and  thought  of  the  South  are  under  every  obligation 
to  deal  with  it  affirmatively  and  constructively.  In 
the  leadership  which  would  respond  to  this  obligation 
there  will  be  errors,  —  some  of  them  really  serious, 
some  of  them  serious  only  to  those  who  fail  to  realize 
that  all  progressive  movement  anywhere  must  neces- 
sarily involve  a  little  of  that  trait  of  the  injudicious 
which  is  the  fine  infirmity  of  disinterested  courage. 
When  great  issues  are  at  stake  the  counsels  of  caution 
become  sometimes  an  intolerable  and  impossible  fetich. 
Mistakes  will,  of  course,  be  made,  but  the  South  will 
also  make  a  demonstration  of  capacity  and  courage 
which  will  accompHsh  real  results.  Anything  is 
better  than  a  situation  in  which — North  and  South  — 
we  too  often  find  the  ignorant  assertive  and  the  edu- 
cated silent,  the  ignorant  aggressive  and  the  educated 
acquiescent,  the  ignorant  recording  with  a  pathetic 
but  sinister  intolerance  the  decrees  of  academic  or 
political  policy,  and  the  educated  exhausting  their 
powers  only  in  the  familiar  exercises  of  private  lam- 
entation. It  is  true,  upon  the  other  hand,  that  in  a 
democracy  the  influence  of  the  best  experience  is 
often  limited  or  defeated  by  the  alliance  of  the  tra- 
ditional forces  of  leadership  with  the  very  ignorance 
which  needs  correction.     The  political  platform,  the 


viii  CULTURE  AND  DEMOCRACY  2?3 

pulpit,  the  university,  the  journalism  of  the  hour,  are 
expected  to  prey  —  for  their  existence  —  upon  the 
errors  which  demand  redress.  The  multitudes  of  a  de- 
mocracy should  insist,  however,  that  in  their  own  in- 
terest the  forces  of  leadership  shall  really  lead.  The 
people  must  come  to  expect  service  rather  than  flat- 
tery—  a  service  which  may  involve,  in  the  interest  of 
its  usefulness,  the  examination  and  criticism  of  popu- 
lar misconceptions. 

For  the  errors  of  a  democracy  are  attended  with 
peculiar  and  disastrous  cost.  In  a  monarchy  or 
oligarchy,  general  administrative  wrongs  are  willed 
from  above  downward  upon  the  masses  of  social  life. 
The  people  may  endure  them  or  approve  them,  but 
the  people  have  never  willed  them,  have  never  spirit- 
ually accepted  them.  When,  however,  a  democracy 
goes  wrong,  the  people  have  done  more  than  go  wrong; 
they  have  willed  to  go  wrong.  Wrong  has  entered, 
by  a  certain  process  of  collective  participation,  into 
the  national  life  and  the  national  spirit.  Its  effect  is 
not  registered  in  the  life  of  the  majority  alone.  The 
consequences  of  elective  action  pass  back  from  the 
action  itself  into  the  will ;  and  multitudes  who,  before, 
were  faintly  right  or  at  least  not  convinced  of  error, 
grow  in  a  subtle  way  to  feel  that  what  the  majority 
has  ordered  is  to  be  henceforth  accepted  not  only  as 
an  authoritative  policy,  but  as  a  moral  finality.  Un- 
less, therefore,  a  democracy  is  to  give  a  spiritual  au- 
thority to  occasional  majorities  which  they  ought 
hardly  to  possess,  and  unless  there  is  to  be  no  effec- 
tive appeal  from  the  tyranny  of  popular  moods,  the 
conditions  of  a  genuine  moral  and  intellectual  leader- 
ship must  be  consistently  sustained.     The  essential 


264  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

obligation  of  democracy  to  culture  is  thus  no  mere 
obligation  to  the  aesthetic  arts  or  to  academic  science 
—  sacred  as  these  must  be  —  but  an  obligation  to 
accord  trust  and  reverence  everywhere  to  the  policies 
of  freedom,  an  obligation  consistent  with  the  rights 
of  the  majority,  but  consistent  also  with  that  larger 
perspective  of  history  in  which  it  has  not  infrequently 
appeared  that  those  who  have  served  democracy  most 
truly  are  those  who  have  saved  the  people  from  them- 
selves. 

II 

Turning  thus  more  directly  to  the  thought  of  the 
obligation  of  culture  toward  a  democratic  order,  it 
must  be  obvious  that  its  first  duty  is  in  large  measure 
to  itself.  Its  own  light  —  in  the  Church,  in  the  uni- 
versity, in  the  home  of  the  citizen  —  must  be  kept 
pure  and  clear.  No  enthusiasm  for  the  education 
of  "  the  masses  "  should  be  suffered  to  obscure  the 
dignity  and  the  necessity  of  the  scholar's  life.  But 
the  law  of  self-preservation  is,  after  all,  but  an  aspect 
of  the  law  of  service.  And  the  law  of  service  is  but 
an  aspect  of  the  law  of  self-preservation.  A  culture 
which  holds  itself  in  detachment  from  the  vital  issues 
of  experience,  which  has  things  to  say  in  reference 
to  the  economic  heresies  of  Germany  or  Russia,  but 
nothing  to  say  in  reference  to  the  economic  perils  of 
its  own  land,  which  deals  at  the  North  only  with  the 
"  problems  of  the  backward  South  "  or  at  the  South 
only  with  the  problems  of  the  "materialistic  North," 
a  culture  which  ignores  its  own  context,  will  not  long 
be  taken  seriously  even  by  itself.  If  it  be  not  inter- 
ested in  life,  it  will  soon  cease  to  be  interested  in  any- 


VIII  CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY  265 

thing ;  and,  consuming  itself  upon  itself,  it  will  pass 
at  length  into  the  dry-rot  of  a  nerveless  and  unfruitful 
cynicism. 

The  quickening  of  the  nerve  of  culture  within  the 
life  of  the  South  has  been  largely  due  to  the  response 
which  its  educated  men,  and  especially  its  educated 
women,  are  giving  to  social  needs.  For  example,  the 
teaching  force  in  the  schools  and  universities  of  the 
South  is,  in  its  personnel,  as  noble  a  social  force  as 
a  democracy  has  known.  It  is  not  surpassed  even 
by  the  inspiring  standards  of  early  New  England. 
And  yet  culture,  as  a  force  of  citizenship,  may  not 
busy  itself  exclusively  with  the  traditional  interests 
of  technical  education.  A  rising  generation  is  edu- 
cated not  only  by  its  schools  but  by  the  forces  of 
established  custom,  by  the  pressure  of  traditional 
truth  or  traditional  error,  by  the  habits  of  opinion, 
the  assumptions  of  popular  feeling,  the  dogmas  of 
collective  sentiment,  within  which  it  looks  outward 
and  upward  into  life.  These  bear  with  intimate  and 
often  with  decisive  pressure  upon  those  who  are  just 
beginning  to  accept  for  their  own  land  and  time  the 
larger  heritage  of  womanhood  and  manhood.  Cul- 
ture has,  therefore,  a  duty  toward  the  scholastic 
training  of  our  democratic  life ;  but  it  has  also  a 
duty  toward  that  vast  body  of  traditional  preposses- 
sions which  form  the  broader  educative  forces  of 
society.  It  is  an  obligation  of  sympathetic,  intelli- 
gent, but  unflinching  criticism. 

If  we  turn  for  illustrations  to  the  South,  it  is  not 
because  I  could  not  find  them  at  the  North,  but 
because  the  North  —  for  the  purposes  of  this  volume 
—  is   "  another    story."      And    the   thought   of   the 


266  THE  TRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

South  must,  for  the  sake  of  the  South,  concern  itself 
supremely  with  certain  confusions  of  sentiment  within 
the  Southern  States.  Indeed,  a  few  of  these  illus- 
trations are  chosen  for  us ;  chosen  both  by  the  obtru- 
sive and  persistent  form  of  the  errors  themselves  and 
by  the  gratifying  and  increasing  evidence  of  Southern 
protest.  There  was  a  time  when  one  of  the  most 
potent  of  these  prepossessions  had  reahty  and  author- 
ity, when  the  cry  of  "negro  domination"  rang  through 
the  heart  of  the  South  with  an  intelligible  although  an 
indescribable  terror.  Yet  for  now  more  than  twenty 
years,  a  negro  officialism  or  the  preponderance  of  an 
ignorant  negro  vote  has  been  impossible.  The  negro 
vote  may  hold  the  balance  of  power  at  this  or  that 
point  where  the  white  vote  is  evenly  divided.  That 
is  true  of  New  York  City  with  its  18,651  negro  votes; 
or  of  the  city  of  Philadelphia  with  its  20,000.  The 
negro,  however,  votes  nowhere  as  a  unit  except  at  the 
South,  and  the  solidity  of  his  vote  is  largely  due  to 
the  force  of  that  external  pressure  which  thus  creates 
the  very  "  peril  "  it  has  attempted  to  defeat.  If  the 
negro  votes  were  not  driven  together  in  a  mass,  there 
could  be  no  decisive  power  in  the  minority  which  they 
represent.  And  even  where  they  represent  a  major- 
ity, —  where  do  they  rule  .-•  or  where  have  they  ruled 
for  these  twenty  years .-'  The  South,  with  all  its 
millions  of  negroes,  has  to-day  not  a  negro  congress- 
man, not  a  negro  governor  or  senator.  A  few  obscure 
justices  of  the  peace,  a  few  negro  mayors  in  small 
villages  of  negro  people,  and  —  if  we  omit  the  few 
federal  appointees  —  we  have  written  the  total  of  all 
the  negro  officials  of  our  Southern  States.  Every 
possibility  of   negro  domination  vanishes  to  a  more 


VIII  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCR.\CY  267 

shadowy  and  more  distant  point  with  every  year,  with 
every  dollar  invested  in  Southern  properties,  with  every 
white  man  come  into  the  South  to  live,  with  every  mile 
of  railways,  telegraphs,  and  telephones,  with  every 
penny  expended  for  pubUc  education.  The  peril  of 
the  supremacy  of  the  colored  population  is  the  merest 
"bogie."  It  was  never  possible,  except  through  the 
support  of  mihtary  force.  That  force  has  been,  for 
nearly  thirty  years,  withdrawn.  It  will  never  enter 
the  South  again.  The  whole  country  has  so  willed 
it ;  and  if  it  could  come  again,  our  intelligent  and 
conservative  negroes  would  be  the  first  to  suspect 
its  motive  and  to  repudiate  its  odious  compulsion. 
Among  all  the  absurdities  of  conjecture,  and  among 
all  the  ridiculous  imaginations  of  theoretic  horror, 
there  is  just  now  no  phantom  so  spectral  in  its  sub- 
stance or  so  pitifully  trivial  in  its  proportions  as  this 
"  peril  "  of  negro  domination.  And  yet  in  certain 
sections  of  our  Southern  States  it  is  still  an  "issue," 
is  still  the  first  theme  of  political  oratory  and  the  last 
excuse  of  civic  negligence.  In  counties  where  there 
are  hardly  enough  negroes  to  form  a  docile  and 
amused  "  example,"  and  where  probably  less  than  a 
hundred  negro  votes  have  been  cast  within  a  decade, 
gaping  crowds  are  yet  thrilled  by  stentorian  assertion 
of  "  the  white  man's  unalterable  vow — in  the  face  of 
all  the  legions  of  brutal  and  insidious  conspiracy  —  to 
maintain  inviolate  the  proud  dominion  of  the  Cauca- 
sian," — and  so  forth.  The  real  interests  of  party  are 
forgotten  ;  the  educative  power  of  sincere  political 
debate,  the  progressive  and  wholesome  influence  of 
the  division  of  men  and  factions  upon  contemporary 
issues  and  in  reference  to  legitimate  political  ideas. 


268  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

are  all  but  abandoned,  and  the  political  education  of 
large  and  potentially  efficient  masses  of  American 
voters  is  dominated  by  a  crude  frenzy  of  the  hustings 
which  seldom  has  either  sincerity  or  validity  except 
as  a  party  lash.  And  this,  even,  is  a  failing  function. 
Sober  and  responsible  men  throughout  the  South  are 
growing  very,  very  tired  of  it.  The  red-shirt  brigades 
of  one  Southern  State  were  called  into  existence  not 
so  much  to  awe  the  negroes  as  to  "arouse"  the  white 
vote.  In  another  of  our  Southern  States  the  vote  for 
the  constitutional  convention,  distinctly  solicited  on 
the  old  issue  of  "  white  supremacy,"  received  the 
suffrages  of  less  than  a  third  of  the  Democratic  voters. 
Not  that  anybody  was  opposed  to  "white  supremacy." 
That  was  precisely  the  reason  why  two-thirds  of  the 
voters  stayed  at  home.  They  knew  perfectly  well  that 
no  one  was  opposed  to  it,  and  that  the  cry  which  called 
them  to  preserve  it  and  to  perpetuate  it  was  a  strident 
but  familiar  fiction.  Those  who  voted  for  the  con- 
vention voted  for  it  not  because  they  thought  white 
supremacy  was  in  danger  but  because  they  wished  to 
put  the  supremacy  of  the  intelligence  and  property 
of  the  State  under  the  securities  of  law. 

"  Negro  domination  "  as  a  force  of  party  control, 
as  a  weapon  of  political  constraint,  is  fast  losing  its 
authority.  Great  masses  of  the  people  are  beginning 
to  "know  better."  Its  passing,  as  a  party  cry,  will 
help  both  the  Democracy  and  the  South.  The  sooner 
the  Democratic  party  comes  to  understand  that,  if  it 
would  hold  the  allegiance  of  the  intelligent  masses 
of  our  Southern  States,  it  must  represent,  not  a  futile 
programme  of  negation,  animosity,  and  alarm,  but  a 
policy  of  simple  ideals  and  of  constructive  suggestion 


VIII  CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY  269 

—  a  course  which  has  given  the  party  its  historic 
position  in  our  life  —  the  better  it  will  be  both  for  the 
party  and  for  the  South.  The  South  can  then  divide, 
and  can  make  its  divisions  turn  upon  thought,  fact, 
conviction.  Every  party  and  every  section  demands, 
in  the  interest  of  its  broadest  welfare,  that  there  shall 
work  within  its  regions,  its  traditions,  and  its  ideas, 
the  searching,  sifting,  divisive,  regenerative  forces  of 
truth  upon  its  merits.  If  this  is  not  to  be  the  privi- 
lege of  the  South,  and  if  the  masses  of  our  people  — 
through  the  wanton  provocation  of  the  North,  or 
through  the  failure  of  our  own  party  leadership  — 
are  to  be  still  possessed  by  the  old  benumbing  and 
baffling  terror,  then  we  shall  have,  as  we  have  had  in 
part  already,  a  form  of  negro  domination  which  we 
have  least  suspected.  The  soldier  of  old  who  bound 
his  captive  to  his  wrist  bound  more  than  the  wretched 
captive.  If  his  slave  was  bound  to  him,  he  was 
hardly  the  less  in  bondage  to  his  slave.  If  the  su- 
preme apprehension  of  the  South  is  to  be  the  appre- 
hension of  negro  domination,  if  our  intensest  effort, 
our  characteristic  and  prevailing  policies,  our  deepest 
social  faiths,  are  to  look  no  further  than  the  negro, 
are  to  be  ever  busied  with  the  crude  fictions  of  negro 
power,  and  ever  clouded  by  the  outworn  demand  for 
the  negro's  bondage,  then,  at  either  end  of  this 
clanking  chain,  there  is  a  life  bound.  If  we  are 
so  morbidly  afraid  of  the  spectral  possibilities  of 
the  negro's  freedom  that  we  must  keep  him  ever 
in  a  prison,  then  let  us  remember  that  on  both 
sides  of  the  prison  door  there  is  a  man  in  duress ; 
for  he  who  keeps  a  jail  is  hardly  freer  than  his  pris- 
oner.    This  is  the  domination   that   we    have  really 


270  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

to  fear,  the  domination  wrought  upon  the  mind  of 
a  strong  and  sensitive  people  by  the  presence  of  a 
weaker  race ;  a  domination  so  possessing  the  imagi- 
nation, with  an  alarm  half  uncontrollable  and  half 
contemptuous ;  so  inducing  perplexity  to  thought, 
and  so  constraining  into  fixed  and  peculiar  forms 
the  course  of  its  whole  experience,  that  the  weaker 
race  acts  upon  the  social  nerve  of  the  stronger  race 
as  the  occasion  of  habitual  hysteria,  touching  even 
its  saner  moments  as  the  all-absorbing  preoccupation 
of  its  culture  and  its  life.  This  indeed  would  be 
negro  domination.  Its  existence  upon  any  wide  or 
inclusive  scale  would  make  impossible  the  simplest 
assumptions  of  a  truly  democratic  order.  To  protest 
against  it,  to  define  its  possibility,  and  yet  to  destroy 
its  possibility  by  the  demonstration  of  its  needless- 
ness  —  this,  of  definite  tasks,  is  among  the  first  of  the 
obligations  of  our  culture  to  our  democracy. 

Ill 

The  educated  life  of  the  South,  capable  of  clear 
thinking  and  of  just  discriminations,  will  also  deal 
with  some  of  the  misconceptions  which  have  gathered 
about  the  topic  of  "  social  equality "  between  the 
races.  But  while  dealing  with  misconception  it  will 
be  compelled,  in  order  to  prevent  blunders  greater 
than  those  it  would  correct,  to  conceive  and  restate, 
in  positive  forms,  the  implicit  racial  passion  which 
underlies  the  cruder  phases  of  racial  antipathy. 
Here,  as  always,  the  recognition  of  truth  may  well 
precede  the  correction  of  error.  And  this  truth  is 
quite  as  vital  to  the  interest  of  the  negro  as  to  the 


viil  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCRACY  271 

interest  of  the  white  man.  The  total  abandonment 
of  the  dogma  of  racial  integrity  at  the  South  would 
mean  a  land  —  not  white,  nor  part  white  and  part 
black — but  a  land  all  black;  with  perhaps  many  of 
those  reversions  of  the  standards  of  political  and 
social  life  which  have  been  exhibited  in  Hayti  and 
San  Domingo.  The  possibility  of  racial  fusion  is 
not  now  repugnant  to  the  instinct  of  the  average 
negro,  repugnant  as  it  is  to  the  instinct  of  the  aver- 
age white  man,  and  this  fact  —  the  fact  that  the  in- 
stinct of  the  black  man  is  usually  ready  to  abandon 
the  individuality  of  his  race  —  puts  the  white  popula- 
tion upon  its  guard  and  leads  it  to  perceive  a  sinister 
significance  in  some  of  the  most  harmless  occasions 
of  racial  contact.  A  number  of  the  wisest  leaders  of 
the  negro  race  are  seeking  to  develop  a  deeper  sense 
of  racial  pride.  Until  negro  feeling  and  opinion  are 
generally  organized,  however,  into  more  tenacious 
and  more  articulate  support  of  negro  race  integrity, 
we  may  expect  that  the  instinct  of  racial  integrity 
among  the  masses  of  our  white  people  will  lead 
always  to  apprehension,  sometimes  to  suspicion, 
and  occasionally  to  unreasonable  and  uncontrollable 
assertion. 

For,  whatever  the  supreme  interest  of  the  negro 
race,  it  is  obvious  that  the  supreme  interest  of  the 
white  race  is  the  interest  of  racial  purity,  a  purity 
necessarily  inconsistent  with  the  slightest  compromise 
in  the  direction  of  racial  fusion.  That  the  individual- 
ity of  the  white  race  has  been  sometimes  betrayed  by 
its  own  representatives  —  betrayed  in  response  to  the 
lowest  passions — is  conspicuously  evident.  That  pub- 
lic opinion  should  have  dealt  too  leniently  with  such 


272  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

offences  is  due  to  two  causes  —  to  the  fact  that  those 
who  are  guilty  of  them  are  for  the  most  part  too 
ignoble  to  be  amenable  to  any  opinion  whatever ;  and 
to  the  fact  that  all  social  life,  Northern  or  Southern, 
European  or  American,  deals  inconsistently  and  in- 
sincerely with  social  evils.  Explanations,  however, 
are  not  excuses  ;  and  with  the  existence  of  so  much 
natural  antipathy  toward  the  negro  who  would  trans- 
gress the  barriers  of  race,  there  must  arise  a  clearer 
perception  of  the  truth  that  the  racial  integrity  of 
the  Caucasian  is  threatened,  most  seriously  and  in- 
sidiously, not  by  the  negro  but  by  the  degraded 
white  man. 

The  formative  assumptions,  the  ultimate  dogmas 
of  a  civilization  are  to  be  determined,  however,  not 
from  the  failures  of  the  few  but  from  the  concep- 
tions, the  laws,  the  habits,  of  the  many.  The  present 
evidences  of  racial  admixture  are  due  not  primarily 
to  the  period  of  slavery  (for  the  old  negroes  are  the 
black  negroes),  nor  chiefly  to  the  period  of  the  pres- 
ent, but  rather  to  the  period  immediately  following 
the  Civil  War,  when  the  presence  at  the  South  of 
vast  numbers  of  the  military  forces  of  both  sections 
—  the  lower  classes  of  the  Northern  army  demoralized 
by  idleness,  the  lower  classes  of  the  Southern  army 
demoralized  by  defeat  —  were  thrown  into  contact 
with  the  negro  masses  at  the  moment  of  their  greatest 
helplessness.  Here  and  there  in  specific  groups 
within  selected  negro  communities  racial  admixture 
may  now  seem  to  be  increasing,  but  this  increase 
is  apparent  rather  than  real.  It  is  only  the  perpetua- 
tion of  an  admixture  that,  once  existent,  will  naturally 
continue  in  its  own  line.     Among  the  great  masses 


VIII  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCRACY  273 

of  the  race,  especially  through  the  illimitable  stretches 
of  the  rural  South,  the  black  people  are  still  black. 
Every  tendency  of  the  present  seems  to  be  making 
not  toward  their  disintegration  but  toward  that  social 
and  domestic  segregation  demanded  by  their  own  in- 
terest as  well  as  by  the  interest  of  the  stronger  race 
about  them. 

And  yet  it  is  inconceivable  that  this  segregation  of 
the  race  should  involve  its  degradation.  That  would 
be  a  conclusion  as  unworthy  of  logic  as  it  would  be 
unworthy  of  life ;  a  conclusion  disastrous  to  every 
interest  of  the  South.  The  perils  involved  in  the 
progress  of  the  negro  are  as  nothing  compared  to  the 
perils  invited  by  his  failure.  And  yet  if  any  race  is 
to  live  it  must  have  something  to  hve  for.  It  will 
hardly  cling  with  pride  to  its  race  integrity  if  its  race 
world  is  a  world  wholly  synonymous  with  deprivation, 
and  if  the  world  of  the  white  man  is  the  only  generous 
and  honorable  world  of  which  it  knows.  It  will  hardly 
hold  with  tenacity  to  its  racial  standpoint,  it  will 
hardly  give  any  deep  spiritual  or  conscious  allegiance 
to  its  racial  future  if  its  race  life  is  to  be  forever  bur- 
dened with  contempt,  and  denied  the  larger  possibili- 
ties of  thought  and  effort.  The  true  hope,  therefore, 
of  race  integrity  for  the  negro  lies  in  estabhshing  for 
him,  within  his  own  racial  life,  the  possibilities  of 
social  differentiation. 

A  race  which  must  ever  be  tempted  to  go  outside 
of  itself  for  any  share  in  the  largeness  and  the  free- 
dom of  experience  will  never  be  securely  anchored  in 
its  racial  self-respect,  can  never  achieve  any  legitimate 
racial  standpoint,  and  must  be  perpetually  tempted  — 
as  its  members   rise  —  to  desert  its  own  distinctive 


274  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

life  and  its  own  distinctive  service  to  the  world. 
There  is  no  hope  for  a  race  which  begins  by  de- 
spising itself.  The  winning  of  generic  confidence, 
of  a  legitimate  racial  pride,  will  come  with  the 
larger  creation  —  for  the  capable  —  of  opportunity 
within  the  race.  The  clew  to  racial  integrity  for 
the  negro  is  thus  to  be  found,  as  stated  in  an 
earlier  chapter,  not  in  race  suppression  but  in  race 
sufficiency.  For  the  very  reason  that  the  race,  in  the 
apartness  of  its  social  life,  is  to  work  out  its  destiny 
as  the  separate  member  of  a  larger  group,  it  must 
be  accorded  its  own  leaders  and  thinkers,  its  own 
scholars,  artists,  prophets  ;  and  while  the  develop- 
ment of  the  higher  life  may  come  slowly,  even  blun- 
deringly, it  is  distinctly  to  be  welcomed.  As  the 
race  comes  to  have  within  itself,  within  its  own  social 
resources,  a  world  that  is  worth  living  for,  it  will  gain 
that  individual  foothold  among  the  families  of  men 
which  will  check  the  despairing  passion  of  its  self- 
obliteration;  and  instead  of  the  temptation  to  abandon 
its  place  among  the  races  of  the  world  it  will  begin 
to  claim  its  own  name  and  its  own  life.  That  is  the 
only  real,  the  only  permanent  security  of  race  integ- 
rity for  the  negro.  Its  assumption  is  not  degradation, 
but  opportunity. 

Thus  understood,  I  think  the  educated  opinion  of 
the  South  has  no  war  with  the  progress  of  the  negro. 
It  has  feared  the  consequences  of  that  progress  only 
when  they  have  seemed  to  encroach  upon  the  life  of 
the  stronger  race.^    It  is  willing  that  the  negro,  within 

1  "  There  is  a  certain  amount  of  race  hatred,  of  course,  and  there  are 
reasons  for  this,  but  the  best  Southern  people  not  only  do  not  hate  the 
negro,  but  come  nearer  to  having  affection  for  him  than  any  other  peo- 


VIII  CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY  275 

his  own  social  world,  shall  become  as  great,  as  true,  as 
really  free,  as  nobly  gifted  as  he  has  capacity  to  be.  It 
has  fixed  its  barriers  —  in  no  enmity  of  temper  but  in 
the  interest  of  itself  and  its  civilization,  and  not  with- 
out regard  to  the  ultimate  welfare  of  the  negro.  It 
cannot  base  its  social  distinctions  on  an  assertion  of 
universal  "  inferiority "  —  for  in  that  case  every 
gifted  or  truly  educated  negro  might  shake  the  struc- 
ture of  social  usage.  It  bases  its  distinctions  partly 
upon  the  far-reaching  consideration  that  the  racial 
stock  of  the  two  families  of  men  is  so  unlike  that 
nothing  is  to  be  gained  and  much  is  to  be  lost  from 
the  interblending  of  such  divergent  types ;  partly 
upon  the  broad  consideration  of  practical  expediency, 
in  that  the  attempt  to  unite  them  actually  brings 
unhappiness  ;  partly  upon  the  inevitable  persistence 
of   the   odium  of  slavery;    partly  upon  a  complex, 

pie.  They  are  too  wise  not  to  realize  that  posterity  will  judge  them 
according  to  the  wisdom  they  use  in  this  great  concern.  They  are  too 
just  not  to  know  that  there  is  but  one  thing  to  do  with  a  human  being, 
and  that  thing  is  to  give  him  a  chance,  and  that  it  is  a  solemn  duty  of 
the  white  man  to  see  that  the  negro  gets  his  chance  in  everything  save 
'  social  equality  '  and  political  control. 

"  The  Southern  people  believe  with  their  usual  intensity  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  civihzation  always  to  protect  the  higher  groups  against  the 
deteriorating  influence  of  the  lower  groups.  This  does  not  mean  that 
the  lower  should  be  prevented  from  rising,  but  that  it  should  not  be 
permitted  to  break  down  the  higher. 

"The  improvement  and  progress  of  the  backward  nations  and  races 
should  all  come  by  improving  the  conditions  of  their  own  group,  but 
should  never  be  permitted  to  come  at  the  expense  of  the  higher  or 
more  advanced  group,  nation,  or  race.  Social  equality  or  political  con- 
trol would  mean  deterioration  of  the  advanced  group,  and  the  South  is 
serving  the  Nation  when  it  says  it  shall  not  be  so."  —  Edwin  A.  Alder- 
man, LL.D.,  President  of  Tulane  University,  New  Orleans,  Louisiana, 
before  the  American  Economic  Association,  December  29,  1903. 


276  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  CHAP. 

indefinable,  but  assertive  social  instinct.^  This  instinct 
operates  almost  as  remorselessly  at  the  North  as  at 
the  South.2  'Yhe  North  is  sometimes  inchned  to 
think  that  it  exercises  a  loftier  discrimination  because 
it  accords  a  genial  social  recognition  to  this  or  that 
gifted  negro  visitor  from  the  South.  Such  an  act 
involves  little  more  than  a  transient  courtesy.  It  is 
no  test  of  the  real  attitude  of  the  North  toward  the 
question  of  "  social  equality."  That  test  is  found  in 
the  attitude  of  the  social  forces  of  the  Northern  city 
toward  the  negroes  of  their  community,  toward  their 
own  fellow  townsmen  and  townswomen,  toward  the 
whole  permanent  and  complex  problem  of  social  reci- 
procities between  families  as  well  as  between  individ- 
uals. What  is  the  social  status  of  the  negro  family 
whose  home  is  in  Boston,  or  Philadelphia,  or  New 
York.''  Is  it  essentially  different  from  its  status  at 
the  South  .''  Are  not  the  few  courtesies  extended  only 
the  more  bitter  because  through  them  it  feels  the 
emphasis  upon  those  which  are  withheld  .''    Is  not  the 

1  See  a  selected  passage  from  the  J?omanes  Lecture,  by  James  Bryce, 
on  page  330,  of  the  Appendix  of  this  volume. 

"^  In  the  city  of  Boston,  Massachusetts,  for  example,  in  a  population 
of  a  half  million  inhabitants,  including  twelve  thousand  negroes,  there 
is  practically  no  intermarriage  of  the  races.  The  instances  that  occur 
are  usually  confined  to  the  lower  elements  of  both  races  and  possess  no 
serious  social  significance.  "  Such  couples  are  usually  absorbed  by  the 
negro  race,  although  if  they  belong  to  the  more  educated  class  they 
enter  into  natural  relations  with  neither  race."  ...  "  Barred  out  from 
the  society  he  most  admires,  his  mimicry  only  excites  mirth,  and  when 
he  touches  the  white  race  on  grounds  of  social  equality,  it  is  the  meet- 
ing of  outcast  with  outcast."  —  See  "Americans  in  Process,"  a  settle- 
ment study  of  the  North  and  West  Ends,  Boston,  by  residents  and 
associates  of  the  South  End  House  ;  edited  by  Robert  A.  Woods,  pp. 
60,  148  ;   Boston;    Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  1902. 


VIII  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCRACY  277 

custom  of  the  South,  save  when  pressed  to  morKid 
and  unusual  conclusions,  happier  as  a  modus  vivendi 
than  the  custom  of  the  North  ? 

But  be  that  as  it  may,  the  South  in  establish- 
ing the  dogma  of  race  integrity  has  done  so,  not 
in  order  to  enforce  a  policy  of  degradation,  but  sim- 
ply to  express  her  own  faith  in  a  policy  of  separa- 
tion. Her  desire  is  not  to  condemn  the  negro 
forever  to  a  lower  place  but  to  accord  to  him  an- 
other place.  She  believes  that  where  two  great 
racial  masses,  so  widely  divergent  in  history  and 
character,  are  involved  in  so  much  of  local  and 
industrial  contact,  a  clear  demarcation  of  racial  life 
is  in  the  interest  of  intelligent  cooperation,  and  —  in 
spite  of  occasional  hardships  —  is  upon  the  whole 
conservative  of  the  happiness  of  both.  During  the 
opening  of  the  great  Southwest  to  private  settlers 
there  was  an  extended  period  of  a  ^z^rtxz-collective 
ownership  upon  the  unrestricted  prairies.  Men  grazed 
their  herds  at  will.  There  soon  arose,  however,  the  con- 
fusion of  boundaries  and  a  consequent  multiplicity  of 
feuds.  Then  a  number  of  the  settlers,  in  order  to  define 
their  limits,  began  to  put  up  fences.  Those  who  first 
did  so  were  regarded  as  the  intolerant  enemies  of 
peace.  Soon,  however,  men  began  to  see  that  peace 
is  sometimes  the  result  of  intelligent  divisions,  that 
the  attempt  to  maintain  a  collective  policy  through 
the  confusion  of  individual  rights  had  broken  down  ; 
that  clear  lines,  recognized  and  well-defined,  made 
mightily  for  good  will ;  that  the  best  friends  were  the 
men  who  had  the  best  fences.  And  so  there  arose 
the  saying,  "  Good  fences  make  good  neighbors." 

Certainly,  however,  the  educated  life  of  the  South 


278  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap. 

must  do  its  utmost  to  see  that  racial  divisions  are  in 
fact  intelligently  made  and  that  the  dogma  of  race 
integrity  is  not  subjected  to  morbid  and  irrational 
apphcations.  In  the  direct  interest  of  its  existence 
and  its  usefulness,  it  must  not  be  made  ridiculous. 
To  assume  that  every  incident  at  the  North  —  how- 
ever unwise  —  of  rumored  or  actual  departure  from 
Southern  customs  is  an  "  insult  "  to  the  South  or  an 
"  attack  "  upon  its  life  is  to  assume  that  the  South 
may  dictate  not  only  for  itself  but  for  all  the  Nation, 
and  it  is  to  imply  that  the  North  must  be  denied 
the  very  liberty  which  the  South  is  so  rightfully 
jealous  to  assert.  The  two  sections  are  so  largely 
different  in  social  feeling  and  domestic  custom 
that  it  will  long  be  difficult,  however,  for  one  to 
understand  the  other.  In  the  South,  the  table, 
simple  though  its  fare  may  be,  possesses  the  sanctity 
of  an  intimate  social  institution.  To  break  bread 
together  involves,  or  may  involve,  everything.  In 
the  North,  especially  in  its  larger  cities,  the  table 
of  the  social  dinner  or  of  the  general  banquet  is 
often  but  a  useful  device  for  getting  together  those 
who  perhaps  could  not  possibly  be  induced  to  get 
together  under  any  other  conceivable  conditions. 
The  social  occasion  usually  involves  nothing  beyond 
itself.  In  this  respect,  and  in  others  equally  im- 
portant. Northern  conditions  and  Southern  conditions 
are  unUke.  That  this  unhkeness  in  conditions  is 
becoming  more  generally  understood  by  the  discrimi- 
nating public,  North  and  South,  is  evident.  But  that 
this  clearer  and  broader  understanding  will  obtain  in 
either  section,  among  every  element  of  the  popula- 
tion, is  not  immediately  probable.      Here  and  there 


viil  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCRACY  279 

at  the  North  the  journalism  of  moral  petulancy, 
abandoning  the  standpoint  of  the  broader  representa- 
tives of  the  Northern  press,  will  still  insist  upon  read- 
ing "  pro-slavery "  designs  into  the  elementary  and 
most  imperative  policies  of  the  South,  and  will  find 
"hatred  of  the  negro"  in  customs  which  have  pro- 
tected him  from  hatred  and  have  made  possible  his 
existence  and  his  happiness.  In  recent  years  nothing 
has  been  more  marked,  however,  than  the  growing 
appreciation  of  the  perplexities  and  difficulties  of  the 
South  upon  the  part  of  the  press  of  the  North.  As 
it  approaches  a  truly  national  standpoint,  it  will  con- 
tribute to  truly  national  ends. 

And  at  the  South  we  may  also  expect  to  find,  here 
and  there,  those  who  will  too  readily  contribute  to 
sectional  misunderstandings,  who  will  misinterpret 
the  feeling  of  the  North,  who  will  continue  to  seize 
upon  every  pretext  which  may  be  twisted  into  a 
sinister  significance,  and  will  discover  in  incidents 
to  which  the  North  is  wholly  indifferent  a  studied 
and  malignant  plot  against  the  life  and  peace  of 
the  Southern  States.  Here,  too,  is  the  golden  oppor- 
tunity of  the  politician  of  the  lower  type.  Dread- 
ing lest  the  masses  of  the  people  should  begin  to 
think  beyond  his  leading  and  to  divide  upon  the 
varied  legitimate  issues  of  principle  or  policy,  he 
seizes  upon  almost  any  excuse  to  raise  and  to 
vitalize  the  fading  terror  of  "  negro  domination," 
thus  to  perpetuate  still  further  —  in  order  that  he 
may  still  profit  by  —  the  political  sohdarity  which 
was  created  by  it.  Not  only  at  the  North  but  within 
many  sections  of  the  South  itself,  the  slightest  con- 
tact with  the  negro  upon  the  part  of  white  men  who 


28o  THE  PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

may  be  interested  in  his  welfare  is  often  watched 
with  a  sensitive  anxiety,  and  the  fear  lest  there  may 
be  some  possible  or  shadowy  indiscretion  is  often  the 
basis  of  unjust  and  unreasonable  rumor,  or  the  occa- 
sion, if  there  be  enmity  toward  the  helper  or  the 
helped,  for  fertile  and  mischievous  detraction. 

It  should  be  the  duty  of  educated  opinion,  as 
expressed  through  the  pulpit,  the  press,  the  univer- 
sity, to  insist  calmly  but  resolutely  upon  the  function 
of  discrimination.  Such  an  exercise  of  discrimina- 
tion is  in  no  sense  inconsistent  with  the  opinion  that 
this  or  that  incident  of  racial  contact.  North  or  South, 
is  injudicious  or  unfortunate.  Blunders,  vicious  or 
ingenuous,  will  necessarily  be  thought  about  and 
talked  about.  To  exaggerate,  however,  this  or  that 
trivial  incident  into  a  vast  and  ominous  peril,  to 
receive  the  evidence  of  an  exhibition  of  questionable 
discretion,  here  or  there,  in  North  or  South,  as  though 
it  involved  a  legitimate  occasion  for  the  frenzy  of 
multitudes,  as  though  it  seriously  threatened  the  fate 
of  peoples  and  the  very  stability  of  a  civilization,  is 
to  take  issue  with  common  sense,  is  to  suggest  that  if 
the  dogma  of  race  integrity  is  so  easily  disturbed,  it 
cannot  be  deeply  rooted,  and  is  likely  to  remove  that 
dogma  —  in  the  opinion  of  the  world  —  from  the  cate- 
gory of  legitimate  social  hypotheses  —  where  it 
belongs  —  to  the  category  of  malignant  and  fanci- 
ful prepossessions,  to  be  opposed  in  the  strong  and 
to  be  humored  only  in  the  weak. 

A  little  discrimination,  a  little  poise,  a  little  of  that 
equable  capacity  which  can  note  the  distinction  be- 
tween incidents  great  and  small,  a  little  clear-headed 
appreciation  of  the  perspective  of  events,  a  due  sense 


VIII  CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY  281 

of  proportion,  will  aid  —  as  nothing  else  can  aid  — 
in  the  secure  establishment  of  the  doctrine  of  race 
individuality  and  integrity.  No  doctrine  or  dogma 
can  be  so  injuriously  compromised  as  by  its  wanton 
and  unintelligent  exaggerations.  A  doctrine  is 
always  held  most  strongly  when  it  is   held   sanely. 


IV 


The  culture  of  the  South  will  find,  however,  the 
occasions  of  its  supreme  and  immediate  interest,  not 
in  the  issues  presented  by  the  negro,  but  in  the  prob- 
lems presented  by  the  undeveloped  forces  of  the 
stronger  race.  These  must  largely  constitute  the 
determining  factor,  even  in  the  problem  presented  by 
the  negro ;  for  the  negro  question  is  not  primarily  a 
question  of  the  negro  among  negroes,  but  a  question 
of  the  negro  surrounded  by  another  and  a  stronger 
people.  The  negro  is  in  a  white  environment ;  the 
white  man  is  largely  the  market  for  his  labor  and  the 
opportunity  for  his  progress,  as  well  as  the  social  and 
political  model  of  his  imitative  spirit.  Where  we 
find  the  negro  in  relation  to  the  trained  and  educated 
representatives  of  the  stronger  race,  we  find  few  of 
the  evidences  of  racial  friction. 

But  the  white  race,  in  the  interest  of  the  efficiency 
and  the  happiness  of  the  masses  of  its  own  life,  must 
bring  its  culture  still  more  closely  into  relation  with 
social  needs.  That  the  presence  of  child  labor  has 
called  out  strong  and  wholesome  protest,  that  all  the 
more  helpless  factors  of  our  industrial  system  have 
commanded  a  deep  and  effective  public  interest,  has 


282  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH  chap, 

been  recorded.  And  yet  in  certain  sections  and 
among  certain  forces  of  the  South  there  has  been 
encountered  much  indifference  or  positive  opposition 
to  the  bettering  of  industrial  conditions.  The  causes 
for  opposition  are  many,  and  have  been  stated  in  an 
earlier  chapter.  Among  these  causes,  however,  the 
most  serious  is  one  which  is  not  peculiar  to  the  South, 
but  which  is  finding,  throughout  our  country,  an 
increasing  power  in  the  shaping  of  our  social  deci- 
sions. It  is  the  exaggeration  of  the  importance  of 
the  money  element  as  contrasted  with  the  human  ele- 
ment in  the  world's  work.  For  many  years  the  South 
struggled  against  almost  inconceivable  odds  in  order 
to  regain  her  place  in  the  commercial  experience  of  our 
country.  She  had  men,  women,  children,  resources, 
but  little  else.  The  process  of  rehabilitation  is  now 
rising  to  completion.  Business  is  growing.  Wealth, 
slowly  but  surely,  is  coming  into  her  life.  How  much 
is  it  worth  ?  There  are  those  who  seem  to  think  that 
it  is  worth  the  exploitation  of  the  ignorant  and  the 
helpless,  who  regard  all  "  reforms  "  as  the  phases  of 
a  Pecksniffian  hypocrisy,  who  not  infrequently  have 
stock  in  the  enterprises  affected  by  the  suggestions 
of  amendment,  but  who  are  "  good  "  people  and  who 
give  largely  to  charitable  and  semi-charitable  institu- 
tions. There  are  others,  however,  who,  while  sensi- 
ble of  the  good  which  men  may  accomplish  with  their 
money,  are  sensible  also  of  the  fact  that,  with  money 
gotten  under  false  conditions,  any  blessing  which  its 
giving  brings  can  never  equal  the  curse  which  its  get- 
ting leaves,  —  leaves  in  that  region  out  of  sight  where 
the  ignorant  and  the  poor  go  with  a  bitter  silence  to 
their  fate,  and  the  young,  in  their  tender  strength, 


VIII  CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY  283 

give  life  itself  when  they  are  only  paid  for  labor.  To 
those  who  have  seen  these  things,  all  that  money  can 
add  to  a  trade,  an  industry,  a  civilization,  does  not 
equal  what  it  takes  away ;  and  the  zest  of  action,  the 
joy  of  success,  the  consciousness  of  increasing  power, 
the  gains  of  external  privilege  and  comfort,  are  not 
matters  of  such  weight  as  the  sob  of  the  child  in  the 
humid  clatter  of  the  mill.  The  mind  of  a  true  culture, 
a  presence  of  fine  and  actual  power  throughout  the 
South,  will  help  her  people  everywhere  to  understand 
that  culture  of  the  deepest  and  broadest  type,  despite 
all  sophistries,  is  never  builded  in  violation  of  element- 
ary human  interests ;  that  a  prosperity  which  means 
the  prosperity  of  the  strong  at  the  expense  of  the 
weak,  carries  at  its  heart  the  curse  of  blunted  per- 
ceptions, intellectual  and  moral ;  that  if  the  material 
elements  of  progress  are  to  outweigh  the  spiritual, 
and  if  the  crude  masses  of  democratic  feeling  are  to 
be  commercialized  before  they  are  moralized,  the 
South  will  lose  that  distinctive  sensitiveness  of  tem- 
per, that  quality  of  charm,  that  generous  imagination, 
that  capacity  for  reverence,  that  alert  and  responsive 
heart,  which  have  constituted  her  peculiar  birthright. 
Yet  the  social  interests  of  the  educated  life  will  not 
be  negative  alone.  They  cannot  rest  within  the 
circle  of  corrective  policies.  They  must  press  on 
into  the  reenforcement  of  those  positive  and  affirma- 
tive proposals  to  which  the  methods  of  remedy  and 
prevention  are  but  contributory.  What  the  child 
may  do  is  of  more  importance  than  what  it  should 
not  do.  The  movement  against  child  labor,  the 
movement  for  the  relief  of  degrading  penal  con- 
ditions for  adults  and  for  children,  are  but  an  impera- 


284  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

tive  part  of  the  constructive  movement — through  the 
kindergartens,  the  schools,  the  churches  —  for  freer, 
more  wholesome  possibilities.  Through  all  the  agen- 
cies of  a  positive  social  progress  the  South  is  rousing 
herself  as  never  before  in  order  that  her  children 
may  be  born  into  a  land  —  not  merely  of  greater 
wealth  —  but  of  more  immediate,  more  abundant 
opportunity.  Upon  the  many  evidences  of  this 
arousal  I  have  dwelt  in  previous  chapters.  That 
it  will  be  sustained  is  clear.  Yet  there  is  no  proba- 
bility that  —  with  all  its  moral  resources  —  it  will  too 
soon  overtake  its  task.  The  vast  stretches  of  rural 
territory  (more  than  seventeen  millions  of  human 
beings  living  in  places  of  less  than  a  thousand  in- 
habitants), the  prevailing  isolation,  the  few  railways, 
the  poor  roads,  the  absence  of  strong  centres  of  social 
organization,  the  remaining  poverty,  the  comparative 
lack  of  diversity  in  industrial  life,  the  schools,  —  inade- 
quate and  not  effectively  distributed,  —  and  last,  but 
not  least,  the  two  races  dividing  the  lands,  dividing 
the  churches,  dividing  the  schools  —  races  to  whom 
coexistence  seems  imperative,  but  between  whom 
coalescence  would  be  intolerable;  here  indeed  is  a 
task  for  stout  hearts,  a  task  in  the  presence  of  which 
men  —  if  they  are  ever  to  accomplish  anything  — 
must  learn  to  know,  to  think  clearly,  to  be  patient, 
and  to  love. 

Where  difficulties  are  so  great,  none  but  the  great 
and  elemental  human  forces  will  prevail.  It  is  there- 
fore of  deep  and  hopeful  significance  that  the  power 
and  influence  of  religious  institutions  is  so  general. 
As  these  come  to  deal  more  definitely  and  explicitly 
with  the  phases  of  social  need,  there  will  enter  into 


Vlii  CULTURE   AND   DEMOCRACY  285 

social  enthusiasms  a  high  and  serious  confidence,  a 
touch  of  authority  and  yet  a  touch  of  tenderness, 
which  will  draw  the  world  to  the  Church  while  it 
draws  the  Church  to  the  quickening  and  freeing  of 
the  world.  Among  civic  forces  the  various  organiza- 
tions of  the  women  of  the  South  are  yielding  an 
inspiring  measure  of  disinterested  service.  An  in- 
creasing commercial  activity  is  at  length  touching 
almost  every  section  of  our  life,  inaugurating  more 
varied  interests  and  opening  new  possibiHties  to 
thought,  energy,  ambition.  The  home  —  the  individ- 
ual American  home  —  here,  as  everywhere,  is  the 
most  intimate  and  most  conservative  of  social  forces. 
But  it  is  to  the  school  —  the  school  in  its  every  form, 
from  the  rural  "  primary  "  to  the  university  —  that  our 
democracy  must  look,  and  may  look,  for  the  more 
satisfactory  adjustment  of  the  problems  which  ac- 
company and  affect  its  progress.  The  university 
touches  life  less  intimately  and  less  deeply  than  the 
home,  but  more  broadly  and  more  explicitly.  The 
university  may  not  be  so  popular  in  its  appeal  as  the 
civic  club  or  so  concrete  in  its  influence  as  the  busi- 
ness career,  but  it  is  more  informing  than  the  one 
and  more  varied,  more  emancipating,  than  the  other. 
It  cannot  touch  the  soul  as  does  the  Church,  it  can- 
not usurp  the  spiritual  functions  or  wield  the  directive 
and  healing  influence  of  the  Christian  ministry,  but  it 
can  touch  the  temporal  conditions  of  the  soul  more 
broadly  than  the  Church  has  touched  them,  can  in- 
vest and  teach  the  whole  body  of  knowledge  with  a 
fulness  which  the  Church  does  not  assume,  and  can 
give  to  the  specific  issues  of  our  civil  and  industrial 
life  a  clearer,  more  definite,  more  explicit  criticism 


286  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap. 

than  has  seemed  practically  possible  to  a  divided 
Christian  fellowship.  Under  the  actual  conditions  of 
Southern  society,  it  may  be  said  that  the  university 
may  become  —  if  it  would  meet  the  measure  of  its 
ideal  —  not  only  the  best  gift  of  a  democracy  to  cul- 
ture, but  the  best  gift  of  culture  to  our  democracy. 

That  it  will  teach  knowledge  —  knowledge  in  its 
fulness  and  its  freedom  —  goes  without  saying.  But 
it  may  also  bring,  through  the  truth  and  value  of  the 
scholar's  standpoint,  the  influence  of  perspective  into 
the  consideration  of  our  Southern  tasks  —  a  perspec- 
tive in  which  men  may  see  more  clearly  the  world- 
position  of  the  problems  of  Southern  life,  may 
understand  that  we  are  laboring  with  difficulties  com- 
mon, in  large  measure,  to  every  civilization  ;  that  the 
South  has  everywhere  something  to  teach  and  some- 
thing to  learn,  whether  from  the  industrial  history  of 
Lancashire  or  from  those  points  —  at  Ceylon,  or 
Bagdad,  at  Johannesburg,  or  Algiers  —  where  white 
men  and  brown 'and  black  are  struggling  with  the 
age-long  divisive  fate  of  racial  cleavage. 

The  university  may  not  only  establish  among  us  a 
clearer  sense  of  perspective;  it  may  help  to  make  the 
method  of  political  and  social  criticism  a  method  of 
ideas.  It  may  contribute  to  the  dethronement  of  a 
method  of  popular  adjudication  which  in  many  quar- 
ters of  the  South  has  long  made  conventions  and 
conventional  traditions  unhappily  supreme.  Of  these, 
many  have  been  necessary,  many  have  been  beautiful 
and  satisfying,  many — just  because  of  tender  and 
compelling  associations  —  must  long  remain  ;  and  yet 
there  is  need  that  the  supreme  method  of  judgment, 
the  supreme  process  of  social  and  political  definition, 


VIII  CULTURE  AND   DEMOCRACY  2S7 

shall  be  more  truly  a  method  of  ideas ;  that  fulness 
and  exactness  of  knowledge,  clearness  and  veracity  of 
thought,  truth  and  accuracy  of  statement,  shall  — 
along  with  breadth  of  sympathy  and  fertility  of  sug- 
gestion —  take  a  larger  place  in  the  shaping  of  popu- 
lar opinion.  When  a  great  section  gives  itself  over 
to  a  prolonged  and  exclusive  emphasis  upon  one  or 
two  ideas,  however  true,  there  is  danger  that  it  may 
at  length  cease  to  have  ideas. 

And  yet  the  collective  progress,  the  social  momen- 
tum, of  a  huge  body  of  democratic  life  is  not  easily 
secured  except  in  relation  to  a  few  clear,  elementary 
conceptions.  These  become,  therefore,  of  such  con- 
trolling and  significant  importance  that  it  is  all  the 
more  needful  that  they  should  be  intelligently  and 
fruitfully  possessed.  The  developments  which  they 
suggest  or  necessitate,  their  broader  meaning,  their 
varied  applications,  should  be  discussed  and  inter- 
preted in  an  atmosphere  of  reverence,  of  sympathy, 
and  yet  of  consistent  freedom.  In  its  contribution  to 
the  creation  of  such  an  atmosphere  the  university 
may  render  its  most  signal  service.  It  may  contribute 
to  our  social  development  not  merely  a  sense  of  per- 
spective and  a  more  vital  method  of  social  criticism, 
but  it  may  henceforth  become  in  our  democracy  an 
effective  organ  of  its  self-correction. 

If  it  is  to  be  so,  however,  it  will  first  become  inti- 
mately, supremely  human,  like,  at  least  in  some 
degree,  that  teaching  force  which  entered  into  our 
civilization  nearly  twenty  centuries  ago,  as  the  pro- 
foundest  social  possession  of  the  Western  world. 
And  believing,  with  Him,  in  the  fertility  of  every 
unreclaimed  or  isolated   province  of   social  need,  it 


288  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH  chap,  vim 

will  find  at  length  its  benediction  in  the  face  of  One 
who  taught  men  democracy  by  His  culture  —  who,  in 
the  richness  and  serenity  of  His  spirit  and  out  of  that 
fulness  of  His  interests  which  has  been  rightly  called 
the  fulness  of  His  love,  taught  the  dignity  and  the 
freedom  of  the  individual  heart ;  who  taught  men  cul- 
ture by  His  democracy  —  opening  the  fulness  of  truth 
through  the  simplicity  of  His  faith  in  life,  opening 
the  wonder  and  promise  of  our  earth  from  the  stand- 
point of  a  soul  giving  to  all  knowledge  the  perspective 
and  the  dignity  of  imperishable  use.  His  supreme 
gift  was  personal,  but  it  has  revealed  an  institutional 
ideal.  The  largest  service  of  the  university  as  an 
institution  of  culture,  only  arises  as  it  comes  to  touch 
the  enfolding  and  educative  forces  of  the  familiar 
world  and  assumes,  in  simplicity  and  sympathy,  its 
more  human  function  as  supremely  an  institution  of 
democracy. 


APPENDICES 


APPENDIX   A 

STATISTICS   OF   POPULATION,   ILLITERACY,   ETC.^ 

The  Twelfth  Census  shows  that  in  June,  1900,  there  were 
in  the  United  States  2,288,470  men  of  voting  age  (twenty-one 
years  and  over)  who  were  unable  to  read  and  write.  This 
was  nearly  11  per  cent  of  the  total  number —  21,134,299. 

At  the  last  presidential  election  the  total  vote  was  13,961,- 
566 ;  and  the  plurality  of  the  successful  candidate  was 
849,790.  In  the  nearly  2,300,000  ilHterate  voters,  there  is 
thus  no  small  opportunity  for  those  who  would  appeal  to 
the  class  feeUng  of  the  ignorant.  If  the  greater  number  of 
this  mass  of  ignorant  voters  could  be  thrown  to  one  side  in 
a  closely  contested  election,  involving  the  national  credit  or 
the  national  honor,  there  would  be  a  more  vivid  appreciation 
of  the  possibilities  which  they  involve. 

Who  are  these  illiterates  and  where  are  they  ?  Many  are 
of  the  negro  race,  976,610;  but  more  are  white,  1,249,897. 
In  1870  the  greater  number  were  negroes,  862,243  to 
748,970  white,  an  excess  of  more  than  100,000.  But  within 
the  intervening  thirty  years  this  has  been  changed,  and  now 
the  white  illiterates  outnumber  the  negro  by  over  273,000. 

Of  the  white  illiterates  a  large  number  are  foreign-born, 
562,000;  but  the  number  of  the  native-bom  is  687,000,  or 
125,000  more  than  the  foreign-born  illiterates.     It  appears 

^  The  matter  of  this  Appendix  (A)  is  largely  taken  from  the  Report 
of  the  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education  for  1902.  The  tables 
of  statistics,  I,  II,  III,  VIII,  were  compiled  for  Chapter  XVIII  of 
Vol.  I  of  that  publication  by  Dr.  George  S.  Dickerman  of  New  Haven, 
Conn.  Table  VII  is  from  p.  Ixviii  of  Vol.  I,  and  Tables  IV,  V,  VI, 
IX,  are  from  Vol.  II. 

291 


292  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

also  that  the  percentage  of  ilHterates  among  the  native- 
born  sons  of  native  parents  is  nearly  three  times  as  great  as 
among  the  native-born  sons  of  foreign  parents.  With  the 
former  it  is  5.9  per  cent,  with  the  latter  2  per  cent,  indicat- 
ing that  our  schools  have  been  reaching  the  children  of  the 
foreigner  more  effectively  than  they  have  reached  the  children 
of  the  native-born.  Not  confining  ourselves  to  the  figures 
for  adult  males,  but  taking  into  view  the  whole  native  white 
population  ten  years  of  age  and  over,  we  find  the  persistence 
of  the  same  tendency.  Even  in  States  like  New  York,  Penn- 
sylvania, and  New  Jersey  the  percentage  of  illiteracy  among 
the  native  white  population  of  native  parentage  is  greater 
than  among  the  native  white  population  of  foreign  parentage.^ 

This  is  due  to  a  number  of  causes,  —  chiefly,  perhaps, 
to  the  fact  that  the  children  of  the  foreign-born  are  being 
reared  largely  within  the  cities,  where  schools  are  accessible 
and  compulsory  education  laws  enforceable,  whereas  the 
illiteracy  among  the  children  of  the  native-born  is  due  to 
the  inadequacy  of  school  privileges  among  the  rural  popu- 
lation. And  yet,  the  presence  in  our  national  life  of 
2,288,000  illiterate  men  of  voting  age  —  618,000  of  whom 
are  native-born  representatives  of  our  native  white  popu- 
lation—  may  well  be  an  occasion  for  serious  reflection. 

In  the  tables  which  follow,  Table  I  presents  the  statistics 
as  to  the  white  males  of  voting  age,  with  percentage  unable 
to  read  and  write,  classified  as  native  of  native  parents, 
native  of  foreign  parents,  and  foreign-born. 

Table  II  presents  the  statistics  as  to  the  negro  males  of 
voting  age,  with  percentage  unable  to  read  and  write,  in 
1870  and  in  1900. 

Table  III  affords  a  striking  illustration  of  the  fact  that  the 
problem  of  illiteracy.  North  as  well  as  South,  is  largely  rural. 
It  presents  the  statistics  as  to  the  white  males  (twenty-one 
years  of  age  and  upward)  with  proportion  unable  to  read 

1  See  Twelfth  Census  of  the  United  States,  Vol.  II,  Table  LX,  p.  cvi. 


STATISTICS  OF  POPULATION  293 

and  write,  classified  by  parentage  and  by  their  distribution 
within  or  without  the  centres  of  population. 

Table  IV  illustrates  the  distribution  of  the  three  elements 
of  our  national  population  in  the  year  1900. 

Tables  V  and  VI  indicate  the  progress  of  the  several 
States  in  the  reduction  of  the  illiteracy  of  the  native  white 
population  and  of  the  colored  population  in  the  twenty  years 
from  1880  to  1900. 

Table  VII  presents  in  close  juxtaposition  certain  facts  as 
to  the  distribution  of  population,  the  per  capita  value  of 
manufactures,  the  relation  between  the  adult  male  and  the 
school  population,  etc.  Attention  is  called  especially  to 
columns  3,  8,  12,  13. 

Table  VIII  presents  the  statistics  as  to  the  counties  in 
the  several  States  in  which  the  proportion  of  white  males  of 
voting  age,  native  and  foreign,  who  cannot  read  and  write  is 
20  per  cent  and  upward. 

Table  IX  indicates  the  rank  of  each  State  according  to 
the  percentage  of  the  illiteracy  of  the  native  white  population. 

In  reprinting  the  following  illustrative  material  upon  the 
subject  of  illiteracy,  the  author  has  had  no  desire  to  exagger- 
ate its  significance.  But,  inasmuch  as  the  statistics  have 
not  been  easily  available  in  popular  form,  it  has  seemed 
well  to  include  the  data  in  this  volume.  Among  the  many 
preoccupations  of  our  national  interest,  the  significance  of 
our  illiteracy  is  perhaps  more  Ukely  to  be  ignored  than  to 
be  exaggerated. 


294 


THE    PRESENT    SOUTH 


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APPENDIX  A 


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THE   TRESENT   SOUTH 


TABLE   II 
Negro  males  of  voting  age,  with  percentage  unable  to  read 

AND    write,   in    1870  AND   IN    I9OO,   BY   STATES    AND   TERRITORIES 


Negro  Males 

OF  Voting  Age 

1900 

1870 

Total 

Illiterate 

Per 

cent 

Total 

Illiterate 

Per 
cent 

The  United  States 

2,060,302 

976,610 

47-4 

1,032,475 

862,243 

83s 

North  Atlantic  Division 

123,328 

18,808 

15-3 

48,656 

14.443 

29.7 

Maine 

445 

77 

173 

497 

69 

13.9 

New  Hampshire 

230 

34 

14.8 

176 

38 

21.6 

Vermont 

289 

57 

19.7 

278 

45 

16.2 

Massachusetts 

10,456 

1,100 

10.5 

4,073 

822 

20.1 

Rhode  Island 

2,765 

425 

154 

1,404 

291 

20.7 

Connecticut 

4.576 

598 

13.1 

2,700 

627 

23  2 

New  York 

31.425 

3,541 

"•3 

14,586 

3.912 

26.8 

New  Jersey 

^^'JZJ 

3,925 

18.3 

7,870 

2,881 

36.6 

Pennsylvania 

51,668 

9,051 

17-5 

17,072 

5,758 

33.7 

South  Atlantic  Division 

817,224 

8,374 

417,400 

51. 1 

456,448 

396.437 

86.9 

Delaware 

3,578 

42.7 

5,224 

3.765 

72.1 

Maryland 

60,406 

24,462 

40.5 

39,120 

27,123 

69.3 

District  of  Columbia 

23,072 

6,024 

26.1 

10,143 

7.599 

74-9 

Virginia 

146,122 

76,764 

52.5 

107,691 

97,908 

90.9 

West  Virginia 

14,786 

5.584 

37.8 

3,972 

3,186 

80.2 

North  Carolina 

127,114 

67.489 

53-1 

78,019 

68,669 

88.0 

South  Carolina 

152,860 

83,618 

54-7 

85,47s 

70,830 

82.9 

Georgia 

223,073 

125,710 

56.4 

107,962 

100,551 

93.1 

Florida 

61,417 

24,171 

39-4 

18,842 

16,806 

89.2 

South  Central  Division 

951.724 

500,093 

52.5 

461.478 

413,182 

895 

Kentucky 

74.728 

36,990 

49  5 

44.321 

37,889 

85.5 

Tennessee 

112,236 

53.396 

47.6 

64.131 

55.938 

87.2 

Alabama 

181,471 

107,997 

59-5 

97.823 

91,017 

93-0 

Mississippi 

197.936 

105,331 

532 

89,926 

80,810 

89.9 

Louisiana 

147.348 

90,262 

61.3 

86,913 

76,612 

88.1 

Texas 

136.87s 

61,744 

45  I 

5J.575 

47.235 

91.6 

Indian  Territory 

9,146 

3,776 

413 

— 

Oklahoma 

4.827 

1,543 

32.0 

— 

— 

— 

Arkansas 

87,157 

39,054 

44.8 

26,789 

23,681 

88 

4 

North  Central  Division 

155.701 

38,652 

24.8 

63,166 

37.434 

59 

3_ 

Ohio 

31.235 

6,813 

21.8 

15,614 

7-531 

48 

2 

Indiana 

18,186 

5,042 

27.7 

6.113 

3.182 

52 

0 

Illinois 

29,762 

5,551 

18.7 

7,694 

3969 

51 

6 

Michigan 

5,193 

726 

14.0 

3,130 

1,015 

32 

4 

Wisconsin 

1,006 

128 

12.7 

642 

185 

28 

8 

Minnesota 

2,168 

150 

6.9 

246 

44 

17 

9 

Iowa 

4,441 

975 

22.0 

1,542 

635 

41 

2 

Missouri 

46,418 

14,829 

319 

23,882 

18,002 

75 

4 

North  Dakota 

115 

19 

16.5 

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184 

30 

16.3 

21 

4 

Nebraska 

2,298 

267 

11.6 

290 

93 

32 

1 

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14,695 

4,122 

28.1 

3,985 

2,772 

69 

6 

Western  Division 

12,325 

1,657 

134 

2,727 

747 

27 

4_ 

Montana 

711 

74 

10  4 

108 

34 

31 

5 

Wyoming 

481 

102 

21.2 

lOI 

33 

32 

7 

Colorado 

3,215 

448 

139 

197 

63 

32 

0 

New  Mexico 

775 

126 

16.3 

85 

58 

68 

2 

Arizona 

1,084 

120 

II. I 

18 

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6 

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358 

17 

47 

36 

8 

22 

2 

Nevada 

70 

16 

22.9 

203 

15 

7 

4 

Idaho 

130 

20 

15.4 

38 

4 

10 

5 

Washington 

1,230 

141 

11,5 

67 

15 

22 

3 

Oregon 

560 

53 

9-5 

143 

48 

33 

6 

California 

3,7" 

540 

14  6 

I.73I 

463 

27.0 

APPENDIX  A 


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«            in  d;  in  N  m"  0" 

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t^NO  M  m  in  N  in  0  N 

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m  q  inoo  vo 
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•<^■<^o  o>«  M  ooovo 

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in  w   M  m  mNO  m  «  ei 
t^  t^NO  NO  Onno  ^  m  m 

0 

0     t^  W  ^O     H 
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in^o  CT"  M  CO 

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ON  m  (^  in  t^  cj  inNO  « 
cj^oo_  o_,no  ei_  q  m  «_  M_ 

d'  N  OcT  On  in  in  tC  Cn"  On 
On  N    On  W  00    inNO  00    in 

inmoi  cjc^NO  ci^rnM_ 

00   0    «    l^  "^  Onno    mNO 
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«    S    M    « 

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NO  00  ■<*-  -<t  in  c*  onno  m 
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N              cC  m'no" 

in  Tj-co  -"a-  Q  0  NO  M  « 
m-<*-M00  0  M  M  m-Nj. 
t^  0^  t^  M^co^oo  m  m  m 
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cK  0  i^  u  ut-^sT 

rt  D  41  «j::  0  c  OJ  J1 

APPENDIX   A 


299 


m  m  inoo  1^  6  oi5  t^  N 

cn  moo  o>no  oo  \d  « 

mw  ONI- 

000  0  t^-*in-*in«NO  \n 

NCiwoOOOm 

N  ino 

«               H 

inOmomM^t^O 
vo  fc  ..*■  t^  M  ,.j-c»  0  00 
00  ^  in  0   0  0  c^oo  m 

H    0    t^  0  MOO  NO    « 

rt-vo  t^  H  m  inoo  N 
m  ONNO  -^  w  m  M  00 

m  in  ts.  tN. 

-^00    t>.  w 

NO  0  '^  moo  ■<^  0  t*^  o^  -^No 
'"1-00  ino  woo  mc^ONine* 

tC  m  0'  in  d  -^no'  tC  i-Too'  « 

t^  tv\o  M  M  -«*•  m  M 
ON  moo  w  M  H  HNO 

r^oov 

s 

c^  O^OO   lA  1^00   H    ov  N 

«  d  o'  d  m  uS  H  fo  H 

0  NO   0   m  OnOO   t^  On 
M  in  d  «  "^00  mNo" 

H            N     W     «     N     M 

m  0  vO  vo 

NO  O'oo  oONMmint^om 

in  t-vND  nooo  ono  mONmM 

Nmm          mmNhmmw 

mvO  CO  U1  m  H  >o   -^vo 
moo  m  N  inoo  co  0  00 
M  m  rovo  00  i/^  M  vo  t^ 

0  NO  m  ON  0  mco  t^ 

ojoo  No^  "^^  ^  ^  '"r  '^ 

rC  h'  ^  0*  in  -^  in  in 

in  -tfvo  T^  w  0   0   w 

0  On  rN.,rv 

ON    W       M      t^^ 

(N  00"   tCvo" 
w  00    tv  « 

t^ro  i^NO  0^  0  00  ON  c?NO  0^ 
m  in  ■<*-  cj  mco  moo  m  oo  m 

0  t^'iJ-c^Hi  r^^^irj^ 

in  H    H           lO  t^  H    H 

ciNoom,  wcioOMd  mNO 
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.^moco  wco  ovtto 

t^M  Noo  in-*t^o>  Tj-00  in 

f^ 

■*mci  m'^^■^tmo  m  '^« 

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00  t^  in  .^  .^  t^  t*N0O  tx 

\D   «oono   -^0   ino. 
00  ON  Cn,  t^  t^  t^co  00 

«    N    N    t^ 
NO    t^OO  00 

t^oo  H  mt-^o^mwvD  cn  m 
NO  i^cooo  m  tv\o  00  rsco  t^ 

vo  0  .^  m  000  -*  0  .v^ 

r^  5  "  ^~  moo  qv  cj  ov 
w  vO  00   IT)  t^  0   ro  o^oo 

'^^  M  CO  t^vo  M  inoo 
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mNO  (N  m  «^  H  CO  0 
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0  M  t^m-^mH  (N 
NO^  m  c^oo   in  ci^  o- 1^ 
m  N   m  m"  h  m"  w  cT 

«  in  ON  « 

On  on  r^OO 

0    OnwnOOO    m    -"i-inONM    N 
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On  -^  m  O'  m,vO  CO  NO    w     C^  N 

M  «oo  mt^^^roinov 

CO    vn  OvO  vo    N^  Ov  fO  (N 

m  N  CO  NO    0    O^NO    IN    -^  0  NO 
\0    t^  m.NO    tN.  w    «    m  On  -^00 

M       '<^M       «       Mmmo 

<*vo  r^  0  >n  0  ^  "-i  g 
t^  H  ov  t^  «  M  vo  fnvo 
M  \o  vo  N_vo  t;  >n  m  0_ 
tJ  o'co  h"  m  go"  m"oo'  n" 

.*  «    «    vnoO    -*  M    Ov  Ov 
"«  °.°°.  i^  f^  0_  m  m  rn 
«"  n"  m'  w  H  m  m" 

inNONN-^mm 
Tj-vD   inco   tj-  0^  invo 
in  -^  in  ON  0  row  ^„ 

t^NO    H    0    On  w    M  NO 

inM  «  CJNO  inmo 
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NO    0    0 

^  i^  0 

Ov 

0" 

ONHOOHO^ino  mvo  m 
«  mo  H  m'^mtN.o  mm 
mmt^moNt^mt^M  mo 

mw  ONmwNO  N  Hoo  mm 

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0 

Q 

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a: 

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Id 
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in 

Kentucky 
Tennessee      . 
Alabama 
Mississippi    . 
Louisiana 
Texas     . 
Arkansas 
Oklahoma      . 
Indian  Territory 

Ohio       . 
Indiana 
Illinois  . 
Michigan 
Wisconsin     . 
Minnesota 
Iowa 
Missouri 
North  Dakota 
South  Dakota 
Nebraska 
Kansas  . 

z 

0 

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K 

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Montana 
Wyoming 
Colorado 
New  Mexico 
Arizona 
Utah       . 
Nevada . 
Idaho     . 
Washington  . 
Oregon  . 
California 

300 


THE   PRESENT   SOUTH 


S  c 

00 

00  q  q  q>o 
ei  6  «  incd 

ONM  Tt-r^o^o  «  «oq 

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oo  t^cJodoo  M  c5  rod 

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o^  m  t^  m  t-^  N  in\n  « 

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lllll 

APPENDIX   A 


301 


CO  00  q  ^  00  (^  m 
N  cv  invo  o>  fo  »o 

N    N    N    H    S    H    t) 

fooo  ro  fo  0 

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-*vo  m  N  « 

M    «    M 

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>o  -a-  0  0  MOO  0 

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co'  -^  M  ei"  fo  tC  tC 
0  «  M  .n  lo  0,0. 

00  00    M  00    ON  t^^O    -«*- 

M  t^  in  c^  ^\D  vo^  o^ 
m  t^co   0  w   m  m  r*. 
CQOO  00  HI  M        w  ro 

S       M_00 

in  tC 

«  r^movinmo   minmo 
l^r^t^«    NOO    'tf-.^Ov  rovo 

00"  vo"  H  CO                rn  iC 

M  H  i^  in  0  00 
M  M  w  00  0  vovo 
ro  .<*|  ro  c<ivO^  a,  q^ 
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00  o^  -I-  »n  >n  t^  moo 
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m    N  vo 
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«  in  en  M  0  -fl-vo  M  r^  (N  t^ 
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tC  N*  cT  0"  cT  ro  ►T 

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m  M^vo  "*  ■*  0^  in 

CO  'O  t^  N  0 
in  t-^  M  M   m 

m  0   -^ 

0          rO   M 

CO   ovoo   m  o^co   0   -^vo   m  Ov 
OvO  r^c^o  inmM  CTv.<^w 
00  in  Ov  t^oo   Ov  m  .vj-co  h  in 

fo  -^t-oo  00  -*■ 
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t^    t^    -^    W      ON 

m 

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in^^M  0  000  mN  T^e^  Ov 
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00   NOO   0    m  M-O 

in 

0 

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<y^'^  00  m 

10  t^l^**Noovo  Ov  inoo  0 
d  d  ci  ovvo  6  6  6  6  6  t^ 

N  *  4o6  t^v5  M 

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0     M     ^   0     0     0     H 

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10  in  0  fooo  ov  t^      « 

in  0   t^  t^  000  N  in  ro  '^i-  t^  m 
in  0  m  c^oo  m  (N   0  vO  0  w  vo 
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N  00   «   invo  00   m  «    -^  0   0 
in  -<!-  Ov  w    Ov  0    mvo    1^00   N 

t-N  mvo_  in  o_  M_  M  00  m  ►!  m 
00"  4  m  m"           m*  cToo" 
m 

t^  moo  CJ   mvo  vc  vo 

W   H   tc  « 

«   Oi  t^  «   w   Tfoo   .*  ef\ 
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dvco"  0"  0"  ■*  'tf-vo'  c^co" 
w  0  0  mh^ininTt-o 
tn  M  t^  Tf  ♦  invo  «  « 

oooovONOOMfn 
m  in  o>  m  -^  moo  m 
Ht  -^  w   moo  invo 

co"  0"  r^oo"  cT  in  rC  tC 
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♦  0   ro  C31 
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in  «   "Too^ 
in  cTvo"  tC 
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mvo  fnoo  «  vo  M  00  r^^vo  m 
t^M  ^cno  mw  0  0  "iTj- 
.*oo  w  m  H  q^vo  0^  o_  0  vo 
vo"  cT  tC  tC  d"  h"  0"  cT  c>ao  en 
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M       m  M       M            N  N  00 

vo  0  .<-  in  ovoo  * 
t^  5  M  t^  inoo  0 
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o_  O;  r;  M   «  CO   C( 
m"  m"  cT                  h" 

0  OvMvooo  w  ^inovH  « 
Hvo   t^-a-ovD  N  0   r-Pi  « 
ov  Tf  in  Ov  in\c  CO  vO   w    t-^  « 

00^  in  CMO  vo  c^^  0 

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ON 

m  N  00  vO    0    Ovvo    N    .<*•  0  vO 

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0  0 
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n  n  <« 

0     g     U     CI 

Montana 
Wyoming     . 
Colorado 
New  Mexico 
Arizona 
Utah     . 
Nevada 
Idaho    . 
Washington 
Oregon 
California      . 

Kentucky 

Tennessee 

Alabama 

Mississippi 

Louisiana 

Texas   . 

Arkansas 

Oklahoma 

Ohio     . 
Indiana 
Illinois  . 
Michigan 
Wisconsin 
Minnesota 
Iowa      . 
Missouri 

302 


THE   PRESENT   SOUTH 


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na 

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Atlantic 
Atlantic 
Central 
Central 
rn  Divis 

2 

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X 

Maine   . 
New  Hamps 
Vermont 
Massachuset 
Rhode  Islan 
Connecticut 
New  York 
New  Jersey 
Pennsylvani; 

2 

i- 

< 

slaware 

aryland 

istrict  of  C 

rginia 

est  Virgini 

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z 

APPENDIX  A 


303 


d  M  d  >A  OMTiiA 

1^  t^oo  t^  t^  t^  r^ 

fONO    N  NO    0    N    0    ON 

t^  10  r^co*  w  t^  d  ro 

■* 

r>oo 

o'no 

ro  * 

<»    tNinNOO    rOI^N    MOOOO 

m-NrO    N    rOMNOOOOO    IN.ON 

rOMNON«»nc^Nro«« 

00    -"^-VO    t^  --J-  IT) 

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lONO    t^  On  N    ■* 
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n8| 

■>? 

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NO    C<  00    0>CO    On  -J-  ■<•  0    0    O 
t^OO  NO    NO  w  00    in  ONNO  00    ■•*• 
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ro  0  N   H   l/^  o^  0 
w  H  m  ro  N  M  M 

NO    0    N    *  M    M 

«   NO 

ro\o  00   1^  ro  'O 
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ON 

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0   M   o>  1000    10 

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NO    in  *00    t^  rooo  NO 

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<^  tC  pToo-oo"  0"  0"  0" 

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»n  ON 

0 

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m  «  ro  *no  in  *  h  CO  -a-oo 

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ro  w  Oi  M  N  ro  IONO  00  t^  in 

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mo  mO   rOM  -^r^o 
vo  ro  *  r~  M  M-00  0  00 
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«    -^OO    OnnO  no    ro 

W     0     t^ONHOONO     N 

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t^  0" 

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0.  t^.  "  '1 1  "^  ".  'i  ^  f^ 
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M             H     M     ro                          «     H  00 

1 
in 

Q 
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• 

2 
0 

.    .2 

n 

H 
Z 

bl 
U 

0 

0  0 

■S  n 

1 

(3 

z 

0: 
bl 

Montana 

Wyoming      . 

Colorado 

New  Mexico 

Arizona 

Utah     . 

Nevada         .         • 

Idaho    . 

Washington 

Oregon 

California     . 

Kentucky 

Tennessee 

Alabama 

Mississippi 

Louisiana 

Texas   . 

Arkansas 

Oklahoma 

Indian  Terri 

Ohio     . 

Indiana 

Illinois 

Michigan 

Wisconsin 

Minnesota 

Iowa 

Missouri 

304 


THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 


^ 

^ 

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J5 

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S  5  -  « 

q:so> 

APPENDIX  A 


305 


00   r0\O   "^  0\  O   O   "^  O  vO   u^OO    fO  M 


ro  ro  m  « 


1  Ovoo  w  vo  m  O 


r^  0  rooo  CO 

m  M  CO  H  o>Q0  vo  t-^  c^ 

N    -^-OO    -i-OO^O    -^OCO    0    t>. 

00  00    -"t-^O    in  NCO    H    V 

nn    M 

0  00  N  woo 

■^  --^  cnco  vo  in  0  «  0 

rO-«-««MMMmM            HH 

«jn*H       „ 

rO'O    M    t^  IT) 
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O    O    O    O^O^C^O^O^OO^O 


)  t^  cy<  H   rl-  rovO 


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■-,00  00    t^  On  t 


cn\o  OnO  c^mw  mn  m  coc4 


tN.  H  o  00  -e-  ( 


« vo  H  o  m  M 


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t^M  woovo  -^t^ON  '^oo  m  t^ 

-*  m  N  m 

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CO  r*.  m  '^  '^r  cn.  rvoo  t^ 

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00  ON  t^  t>.  r-.  t^co  00  NO  t^oo  CO 

tsoo  HI  in 
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t^  ON  ro  N  NO*  cj  rn 
m  O.NO  CO  t>.oo  cs, 

roN  -^comci  h  en 


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S  S 


3o6 


THE   PRESENT   SOUTH 


TABLE   VIII 
Counties  in  the  several  States  in  which  the  proportion  of 

WHITE    males   of   VOTING   AGE,   NATIVE   AND    FOREIGN,   WHO   CAN- 
NOT  READ   AND   WRITE,   IS    20   PER  CENT  AND   UPWARD 


Total 

Illiter- 

Per 

Total 

Illiter- 

Per 

ate 

cent 

ate 

cent 

MAINE 

N.  CAROLINA  — i-<7«. 

Aroostook 

16,271 

3,755 

23.1 

Nash     . 

3,556 

814 

22.9 

NEW   YORK 

Duplin  . 
Wilson  . 

3,288 
3,306 

758 
765 

23.1 
23.1 

Clinton . 

13,602 

3,345 

24.6 

Yadkin . 

2,830 

660 

23-3 

PENNSYLVANIA 

Sampson 

3,976 

936 

23-5 

Luzerne 

70,171 

14,029 

20.0 

Polk       . 
Clay      . 

1,284 
927 

303 
220 

23.6 
23-7 

VIRGINIA 

Cherokee 

2,429 

579 

23.8 

Pittsylvania  . 

5.859 

1,185 

20.2 

Johnston 

5,407 

7,296 

24.0 

Smyth  . 

3.755 

770 

20.6 

Franklin 

3,068 

746 

24-3 

Wythe  . 

4,016 

845 

21.0 

Haywood 

3,283 

802 

24.4 

Washington 

5.981 

1,275 

21.2 

Gates     . 

1,290 

319 

24.7 

Gloucester 

1.524 

346 

22.7 

Swain    . 

1,553 

394 

25-4 

Carroll  . 

3.9°8 

905 

23.2 

Greene  . 

1,507 

386 

25.6 

Franklin 

4,119 

975 

23.6 

Jackson 

2,360 

609 

25.8 

Lee 

4,003 

961 

24.0 

Madison 

4,074 

1,077 

26.4 

Stafford 

1,636 

397 

24.2 

Mitchell 

2,980 

816 

27.4 

Scott 

4,787 

1,193 

24.9 

Person  . 

2,132 

603 

28.2 

Dickenson 

1,521 

380 

25.0 

Surry    . 

5,019 

1,414 

28.2 

Russell 

3,817 

1,003 

26.2 

Yancey 

2,295 

707 

30.8 

Patrick . 

2,923 

914 

31.2 

Wilkes  . 

5,081 

1,568 

30.9 

Greene . 

1,058 

331 

31-3 

Stokes  . 

3,607 

1,174 

32.5 

Buchanan 

1,957 

696 

35-6 

SOUTH   CAROLINA 

WEST  VIRGINIA 

Horry   . 

3,553 

752 

21.2 

McDowell     . 

3.700 

747 

20.2 

Pickens 

3,190 

689 

21.6 

Wyoming 

1,710 

375 

21.9 

Chesterfield  . 

2,68i 

702 

26.2 

Boone   . 

1.725 

449 

26-0 

Lincoln 

3.336 

868 

26.0 

GEORGIA 

Mingo  . 

2,617 

698 

26.7 

Murray 

1,733 

354 

20.4 

Logan   . 

1,475 

40s 

27-5 

Twiggs 

701 

144 

20.5 

NORTH    CAROLINA 

Gilmer  . 

Miller    . 

2,104 
798 

442 

171 

21.0 
21.4 

Hertford 

1.441 

290 

20.1 

Rabun  . 

1,234 

265 

21.5 

Rockingham 

4.903 

988 

20.2 

Dawson 

1,040 

227 

21.8 

Macon  . 
Onslow 

2,328 

479 

20.6 
20.8 

Paulding 

2,493 

557 

22.3 

2,04s 

426 

Glascock 

666 

149 

22.4 

Lenoir  . 

2,6og 

545 

20.9 

Pickens 

1,750 

395 

22.6 

Montgomery 

2,412 

507 

21.0 

Fannin 

2,268 

535 

23.6 

Dare 

1,072 

227 

21.2 

Union   . 

1,665 

393 

23.6 

Harnett 
Ashe     . 

2,439 
3,847 

823 

21.2 
21.3 

Lumpkin 

1,544 

410 

26.6 

Davie    . 

2,184 

467 

21.4 

FLORIDA 

Martin  . 

1,907 

409 

21.4 

Taylor  . 

776 

194 

25.0 

Davidson 

4,515 

975 

21.5 

Holmes 

1,389 

357 

25.7 

Pitt        . 

3,792 

816 

21' 5 

Watauga 

2,689 

579 

21.5 

KENTUCKY 

Caldwell 

2,963 

646 

21.8 

Lewis    . 

4,477 

896 

20.0 

Stanly  . 
Camclen 

2,716 

593 

21.8 

Grayson 

4,471 

914 

20.4 

808 

178 

22.0 

Menifee 

1,478 

301 

20.4 

Cleveland 

4.333 

958 

22.1 

M  arion 

3,193 

653 

20.5 

Tyrrell  . 

850 

188 

22.1 

Marshall 

2,582 

540 

20.9 

Burke    . 

3,341 

753 

22.5 

Allen     . 

3,378 

720 

21.3 

Graham 

838 

191 

22.8 

Johnson 

2,879 

614 

21.3 

APPENDIX   A 


307 


TABLE  VIII  — Continued 


Total 

Illiter- 

Per 

Total 

Illiter- 

Per 

ate 

cent 

ate 

cent 

KENTUCKY  —  COtl. 

ALABAMA 

Adair    . 

3.084 

668 

21.6 

St.  Clair 

3,416 

688 

20.1 

Rockcastle 

2,787 

609 

21.9 

Winston 

1,905 

393 

20.6 

Rowan . 

1.875 

41S 

22.1 

Franklin 

3,038 

639 

21.0 

Lawrence 

4,180 

961 

23.0 

Chilton 

2,908 

624 

21.5 

Butler  . 

3.568 

830 

23.3 

Covington 

2,817 

612 

21.7 

Metcalfe 

2,178 

514 

23.6 

Cherokee 

3,913 

867 

22.2 

Bell       . 

3,220 

764 

23.7 

Cleburne 

2,644 

595 

22.5 

Carter  . 

4,389 

1,046 

23.8 

Coffee    . 

3,517 

844 

24.0 

Casey    . 
Wayne . 

3.365 
3.079 

813 
746 

24.2 
24.2 

MISSISSIPPI 

Lee        . 

1,627 

395 

243 

Hancock 

1,892 

387 

20.4 

Knox    . 
Greenup 
Clinton 

3,530 
3.497 
1,667 

861 
859 
421 

24.4 
24.6 
25-3 

LOUISIANA 

West  Baton  Rouge 

635 

136 

21.4 

Edmonson 

2,101 

555 

26.4 

Iberville 

2,541 

640 

25.2 

Estill     . 

2,491 

657 

26.4 

Livingston    . 

1,486 

377 

25-3 

Cumberland 

1.778 

481 

27.1 

Point  Coupee 

1,620 

442 

27-3 

Letcher 

1,777 

493 

27.7 

Plaquemines 

1,678 

476 

28.4 

Owsley 

1.435 

397 

27.7 

Iberia    . 

3,416 

1,049 

30.7 

Jackson 

2,119 

593 

28.0 

St. John  the  Baptis 

t     1,279 

397 

31.0 

Martin  . 

1,171 

338 

28.9 

St.  Bernard  . 

771 

246 

31.9 

Magoffin 

2,387 

709 

29.7 

St.  James 

2,202 

712 

32.3 

Elliott   . 

2,038 

609 

29.9 

St.  Mary 

3,566 

1,224 

34-3 

Harlan  . 

1,888 

567 

30.0 

Ascension 

2,755 

950 

34-5 

Floyd    . 

3,074 

939 

30.5 

Cameron 

739 

261 

35-3 

Perry     . 

1,570 

493 

31-4 

Avoyelles 
St.  Charles 

3,621 

1,443 

39-9 

Pike       . 

4,462 

1,432 

32.1 

830 

332 

40.0 

Breathitt 

2,748 

8go 

32.4 

Acadia  . 

4,301 

1,786 

41-5 

Clay      . 

2,789 

983 

35.2 

Lafayette 

2,863 

1,192 

41.6 

Leslie    . 

1,272 

448 

35-2 

St.  Landry 

5,268 

2,305 

43-7 

Knott    . 

1,561 

559 

35-8 

St.  Martin 

1,109 

986 

47.1 

TENNESSEE 

Assumption 
Terrebonne 

2,776 
3,282 

1,313 
1,627 

47-3 
49.5 

Benton . 

2,581 

526 

20.4 

Jefferson 

1,5" 

752 

49.8 

Meigs    . 

1,465 

307 

20.9 

Lafourche 

4,510 

2,277 

50.5 

Bledsoe 

1,377 

291 

21. 1 

Vermilion 

3,494 

1,768 

51.2 

Polk      . 

2,583 

546 

21. 1 

Campbell 

3,799 

806 

21.2 

TEXAS 

Van  Buren 

688 

147 

21.4 

Refugio 

285 

57 

20.0 

Marion  . 

3,523 

768 

21.5 

Zavalla 

211 

45 

21.3 

Scott     . 

2,257 

483 

21.5 

Wilson  . 

2,889 

620 

21-5 

Union   . 

2,818 

608 

21.6 

Uvalde 

1,113 

257 

23.1 

Clay      . 

1,837 

409 

22.2 

Dimmit 

303 

72 

23.8 

Anderson 

3,858 

866 

22.4 

Live  Oak 

526 

128 

24-3 

Perry     . 

1,816 

407 

22.4 

McMuUen 

268 

65 

243 

Morgan 

2,126 

476 

22.4 

Bee        . 

1,682 

411 

24.4 

Jackson 

3,087 

702 

22.7 

Frio 

941 

232 

24.6 

Sevier   . 

4,321 

980 

22.7 

Karnes 

1,946 

525 

26.9 

Monroe 

3,815 

871 

22.8 

Jeff  Davis 

323 

91 

28.2 

Hancock 

2,217 

514 

23.2 

Atascosa 

1.519 

452 

29.8 

Grainger 

2,623 

804 

23.4 

El  Paso 

7,300 

2,199 

30.1 

Unicoi  . 

1,296 

314 

24.2 

Valverde 

1,449 

470 

32.4 

Cocke    . 

3,803 

937 

24.6 

Brewster 

699 

229 

32.8 

Pickett 

1,132 

284 

25.1 

Kinney 

580 

193 

33-3 

Hawkins 

4,757 

1,212 

25.4 

Nueces 

2,451 

898 

36.6 

Claiborne 

4,326 

1,105 

25.6 

Maverick 

1,005 

378 

37-6 

Fentress 

1,324 

343 

25-9 

San  Patricio 

577 

227 

39-3 

Macon  . 

2,773 

719 

25-9 

Pecos     . 

914 

367 

40.1 

Johnson 

2,130 

573 

26.9 

Ward     . 

404 

162 

40.1 

Carter   . 

3,588 

989 

27.6 

La  Salle 

587 

236 

40.2 

3o8 


THE   PRESENT  SOUTH 


TABLE  VHI  — Concluded 


Total 

Illiter- 

Per 

Total 

Illiter- 

Per 

ate 

cent 

ate 

cent 

TEXAS  — con. 

NEW  MEXICO  —  con. 

Reeves  . 

S13 

2It 

41. 1 

Grant    . 

4.451 

1,098 

24.6 

Zapata  . 

1,128 

484 

42.9 

Sierra    . 

963 

247  i  25.8 

Presidio 

903 

391 

43-3 

Socorro 

3.4" 

981 

2S-8 

Duval    . 

1.883 

862 

45-7 

San  Miguel  . 

5.749 

1.749 

30.4 

Webb    . 

5,841 

2,874 

49.2 

ARIZONA 

Cameron 
Starr 

3,423 
2,593 

1,721 
1,369 

SO.  3 
52.8 

Guadalupe    . 

1.344 

427 

31-8 

Hidalgo 

1,522 

808 

53-1 

Valencia 
Mora     . 

2,712 
2.453 

819 

32.1 
33-4 

ARKANSAS 

Rio  Arriba    . 

3.092 

1,113 

36.0 

Randolph 

3,898 

780 

20.0    Donna  Ana  . 

2,818 

1. 163 

41-3 

Newton 

2,608 

527 

20.2 

Apache 

538 

138 

20.4 

MISSOURI 

Graham 
Pinal     . 

4,722 
1,658 

1,084 
406 

23.0 
24- 5 

Washington  . 

3.257 

756 

23.2 

Pima     . 

3.844 

985 

25.6 

NEW   MEXICO 

Santa  Cruz    . 

1.347 

412 

30.6 

Union   . 

1,268 

283 

22.3 

COLORADO 

Taos      . 

2,974 

555 

22.4 

1 

Huerfano 

2,269 

698 

30.8 

TABLE   IX 
Showing  the  rank  of  each  State  in  percentage  of  illiteracy 

OF  THE   native  WHITE  POPULATION   ID  YEARS  OF  AGE  AND  OVER : 
1900 


Rank 

State  or  Territory 

Per 
cent 

Rank 

State  or  Territory 

Per 

cent 

I 

Washington 

0.5 

26 

Ohio          .        .        .        . 

2-4 

2 

South  Dakota   . 

0.6 

27 

Maine 

2.4 

3 

Montana   . 

0.6 

28 

Oklahoma 

2-5 

4 

Nevada      . 

0.6 

29 

Colorado  . 

2.7 

5 

Wyoming  . 

0.7 

30 

Vermont    . 

2.9 

6 

Massachusetts 

0.8 

31 

Indiana     . 

^6 

7 

Minnesota 

0.8 

32 

Maryland 

4.1 

8 

Nebraska 

0.8 

33 

Missouri    . 

4.8 

9 

Connecticut 

0.8 

34 

Delaware  . 

S.6 

10 

Oregon 

0.8 

35 

Texas 

6.1 

II 

Utah 

0.8 

36 

Arizona     . 

6.2 

12 

District  of  Columbia 

0.8 

37 

Mississippi 

8.0 

13 

North  Dakota  . 

0.9 

38 

Florida      . 

8.6 

14 

Idaho 

0.9 

39 

West  Virginia 

lO.O 

15 

California . 

I.O 

40 

Virginia    . 

II. I 

16 

New  York 

1.2 

41 

Arkansas  . 

11.6 

17 

Iowa 

1.2 

42 

Georgia     . 

11.9 

18 

Wisconsin 

1-3 

43 

Kentucky 

12.8 

19 

Kansas 

1-3 

44 

South  Carolina 

13.6 

20 

New  Hampshire 

1-5 

45 

Indian  Territory 

14.0 

21 

Michigan  . 

1-7 

46 

Tennessee 

14.2 

22 

New  Jersey- 

1.7 

47 

Alabama  . 

14.8 

23 

Rhode  Island    . 

1.8 

48 

Louisiana 

17-3 

24 

Illinois 

2.1 

49 

North  Carolina 

195 

25 

Pennsylvania    . 

2.3 

SO 

New  Mexico     . 

29.4 

APPENDIX    B 

CHILD    LABOR    IN    ALABAMA  * 

A  CORRESPONDENCE 

A  Discussion  of  New  England's  Part  in  the  Common 
Responsibility  for  the  Child-labor  Conditions  of 
THE  South 

In  the  summer  of  the  year  1901  the  Executive  Committee 
on  Child  Labor  in  Alabama  observed,  in  the  New  England 
press,  certain  criticisms  of  the  child-labor  conditions  of  the 
South.  Knowing  that  the  South  was  not  alone  at  fault,  and 
that  Eastern  men  have  been  partly  responsible  for  the  failure 
of  child-labor  legislation  in  the  Southern  States,  the  Com- 
mittee addressed  a  public  statement  of  the  facts  to  the 
people  and  the  press  of  New  England. 

The  object  of  this  statement  was  to  awaken  the  public 
opinion  of  New  England  in  order  that  this  opinion  might 
operate  to  control  —  not  the  South  —  but  the  New  England 
man  who  is  doing  at  the  South  what  he  cannot  and  dare  not 
do  at  home. 

A  Reply  to  the  Committee 

On  Wednesday,  October  30,  the  following  communica- 
tion appeared  in  the  Evening  Transcript  of  Boston,  Massa- 
chusetts. 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Transcript : 

My  attention  has  been  called  to  an  article  in  your  paper  of  the 
23d  Inst.,  signed  by  gentlemen  from  Alabama,  in  reference  to 
child  labor. 

1  A  reprint  of  one  of  the  series  of  pamphlets  circulated  by  the  Ala- 
bama Committee  in  behalf  of  factory  legislation. 

309 


310  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

As  treasurer  of  a  mill  in  that  State,  erected  by  Northern  capi- 
tal, I  am  interested  in  the  subject.  From  the  starting  of  our 
mill,  I  have  never  been  South  without  protesting  to  the  agent, 
and  overseer  of  spinning  (the  only  department  in  which  small 
help  can  be  employed),  against  allowing  children  under  twelve 
years  of  age  to  come  into  the  mill,  as  I  did  not  consider  them 
intelligent  enough  to  do  good  work.  On  a  visit  last  June, 
annoyed  that  my  instructions  were  not  more  carefully  observed, 
before  leaving  I  wrote  the  agent  a  letter  of  which  the  following 
is  a  copy  :  — 

"Every  time  I  visit  this  mill,  I  am  impressed  with  the  fact 
that  it  is  a  great  mistake  to  employ  small  help  in  the  spinning 
room.  Not  only  is  it  wrong  from  a  humanitarian  standpoint  but 
it  entails  an  absolute  loss  to  the  mill.  We  prepare  the  stock  and 
make  it  into  roving,  and,  because  of  the  small  spinners,  send 
back  to  the  pickers  an  excessive  amount  of  roving  waste,  and 
meantime  lose  the  work  of  the  spindles.  I  again  express  the 
wish  that  you  prevent  the  overseer,  as  far  as  possible,  from 
employing  children  under  twelve  years  of  age.  I  know  it  is 
sometimes  difficult  to  get  at  the  real  age  —  and  in  some  cases 
the  parents  may  threaten  to  leave  our  employ  unless  we  give 
work  to  their  small  children,  but  we  must  take  this  stand  —  and 
I  trust  an  honest  effort  will  be  made  to  carry  out  my  wishes." 

In  defence  of  our  officials,  it  is  doubtless  true  that  the  trouble 
comes  largely  from  the  parents,  who  make  every  effort  to  get 
their  children  into  the  mill,  and  often  because  of  refusal,  take 
their  families  containing  needed  workers,  to  other  mills,  where 
no  objection  is  made  to  the  employment  of  children.  The  state- 
ment that  twice  as  many  children  under  twelve  years  of  age  are 
employed  in  mills  under  Northern  control  as  in  Southern  mills, 
if  it  means,  as  it  should,  in  proportion  to  spindles  on  same  num- 
ber of  yarns,  is  absolutely  false  so  far  as  relates  to  our  company, 
and  I  have  reason  to  believe  the  same  can  be  said  of  other  mills 
under  Northern  ownership. 

Now  in  regard  to  the  attempted  legislation  of  last  winter: 
The  labor  organizations  at  the  North  imported  from  England  a 
very  bright  and  skilful  female  labor  agitator  and  sent  her  to 
Alabama.  She  held  meetings  at  central  points,  and  when  the 
Legislature  convened  appeared  at  Montgomery  with  her  following. 


APPENDIX   B  311 

and  a  bill  against  employing  children  was  promptly  introduced. 
The  manufacturers  and  other  business  men  of  Alabama  resented 
this  outside  interference,  well  knowing  the  source  from  which  it 
came,  and  they  were  also  aware  that  manufacturers  at  the  North 
were  being  solicited  for  funds  with  which  to  incite  labor  troubles 
in  the  South. 

As  they  recognized  that  this  bill  was  only  the  entering  wedge, 
they  determined  that  action  must  come  from  within  the  State, 
and  not  outside.  They  also  felt  that  the  adjoining  State  of 
Georgia,  having  double  the  number  of  spindles,  should  act  first. 
With  these  considerations  in  mind,  the  manufacturers  selected 
among  others  our  agent,  a  native  Alabamian,  to  appear  before  the 
legislative  committee,  with  the  result  that  the  bill  was  defeated. 
I  think  it  may  be  said  with  truth,  that  the  interference  of  Northern 
labor  agitators  is  retarding  much  needed  legislation  in  all  the 
manufacturing  States  of  the  South. 

As  to  our  mill  and  the  little  town  of  2300  people  which  has 
grown  up  around  it,  there  is  nothing  within  the  mill  or  without, 
of  which  any  citizen  of  Massachusetts  need  be  ashamed.  On 
the  contrary,  I  challenge  either  of  the  gentlemen  from  Alabama 
whose  names  are  attached  to  the  letter  referred  to,  to  mention 
among  the  forty  mills  in  the  State,  of  which  only  four  are  directly 
operated  from  the  North,  any  one  which  will  compare  with  ours, 
in  the  expenditure  which  has  been  made  for  the  comfortable 
housing  of  the  operatives,  and  the  appliances  introduced  for  their 
comfort  and  uplift.  From  the  inception  of  this  enterprise,  the 
purpose  has  been  to  build  up  a  model  town  that  should  be  an 
object  lesson  to  the  South,  and  we  are  assured  that  its  influences 
have  been  helpful.  In  addition  to  a  school  supported  by  public 
tax,  the  company  has  always  carried  on  a  school  of  its  own,  with 
an  experienced  and  devoted  teacher,  who  has  been  instructed  to 
make  special  effort  to  get  in  the  young  children,  and  thus  allure 
them  from  the  mill.  We  have  built  and  have  in  operation  a 
beautiful  library  —  the  first  erected  for  this  special  purpose  in  the 
State  of  Alabama,  and  we  have  a  church  building  which  would 
be  an  ornament  in  any  village  of  New  England,  and  is  in  itself 
an  education  to  our  people.  We  are  now  building  a  modern 
schoolhouse  from  plans  by  Boston  architects  which  will  accom- 
modate all  the  children  of  our  community.     These  are  a  few  of 


312  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

the  things  we  have  done  and  are  doing,  in  our  effort  to  meet  the 
responsibility  we  have  assumed,  in  dealing  with  a  class  of  people 
who  have  some  most  excellent  traits,  and  who  appeal  to  us  strongly, 
because  many  of  them  have  hitherto  been  deprived  of  needed 
comforts  and  largely  of  elementary  advantages. 

What  we  are  attempting  to  do  for  our  operatives  may  seem  to 
the  gentlemen  who  signed  the  appeal  in  your  columns  as  "  spec- 
tacular philanthropy  "  and  a  "  heartless  policy  "  ;  but  this  is  not 
the  opinion  of  our  employees,  nor  of  visitors  who  have  acquainted 
themselves  with  the  facts,  nor  of  the  communities  adjacent  to  us. 

J.  Howard  Nichols, 
Treasurer  Alabama  City  Mill,  Alabama. 

A  Rejoinder  from  Alabama 

On  the  afternoon  of  November  2d,  Mr.  Edgar  Gardner 
Murphy,  of  Montgomery,  Alabama,  the  chairman  of  the 
Alabama  Child-labor  Committee,  received  a  copy  of  the 
above  letter.  Mr.  Murphy  at  once  wrote  and  forwarded 
the  following  rejoinder  :  — 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Transcript  : 

I  note  in  your  issue  of  October  30th  a  reply  to  a  statement  to 
the  press  and  the  people  of  New  England,  on  the  subject  of  child 
labor  in  Alabama.  Our  statement  bore  the  signatures  of  six  ^ 
representative  citizens  of  Alabama,  among  them  the  Superin- 
tendent of  Public  Schools  of  Birmingham  and  ex-Governor 
Thomas  G.  Jones,  of  Montgomery.  The  reply  to  the  address 
of  the  committee  is  signed,  not  by  a  disinterested  citizen  of  the 
State,  but  by  Mr.  J.  Howard  Nichols,  Treasurer  of  the  Alabama 
City  Mill,  at  Alabama  City. 

1  The  full  membership  of  the  Alabama  Committee  was,  at  a  later 
date,  as  follows  :  Judge  J.  B.  Gaston,  Dr.  B.  J.  Baldwin,  Rev.  Neal  L. 
Anderson,  Judge  Thos.  G.  Jones,  S.  B.  Marks,  Jr.,  Judge  W.  H.  Thomas, 
Father  O'Brien,  and  Edgar  Gardner  Murphy,  of  Montgomery ;  John 
Craft,  Erwin  Craighead,  Jos.  E.  Rich,  of  Mobile  ;  (the  Hon.  Richard 
H.  Clarke  was  a  member  of  the  local  committee  at  Mobile)  ;  and  A.  J. 
Reilly,  Rev.  John  G.  Murray,  Hon.  A.  T.  London,  and  Dr.  J.  H. 
Phillips,  Superintendent  of  Schools,  of  Birmingham. 


APPENDIX   B  313 

I  thank  you  for  publishing  Mr.  Nichols's  letter.  The  well- 
known  citizens  of  Alabama  with  whom  I  have  the  honor  to  be 
associated,  have  welcomed  the  discussion  of  this  subject,  and  they 
desire  the  frankest  and  fullest  showing  of  the  facts. 

I  note,  however,  with  some  amazement,  that  the  Treasurer  of 
the  Alabama  City  Mill  begins  his  argument  by  conceding  the 
two  fundamental  principles  for  which  we  are  contending  —  the 
social  wrong  and  the  economic  error  of  child  labor  under  twelve. 
He  declares  that  from  the  starting  of  that  mill  he  has  repeatedly 
protested  against  the  use  of  children  under  this  age  and  that  last 
June  he  wrote  to  his  local  agent  that  the  employment  of  such 
help  "  is  not  only  wrong  from  a  humanitarian  standpoint,  but  it 
entails  an  absolute  loss  to  the  mill."  Now  this  is  substantially, 
and  in  admirable  form,  the  whole  case  of  our  committee. 

Yet  what  must  be  our  added  amazement  when,  in  the  next 
paragraph  but  one,  we  read  the  further  admission  that,  in  order 
to  continue  this  economic  and  social  wrong  and  in  order  to  defeat 
a  simple  and  effective  remedy  for  this  wrong,  the  salaried  repre- 
sentative of  his  own  mill,  during  the  preceding  February,  had 
appeared  in  this  city  before  our  Legislature,  in  aggressive  and 
persistent  antagonism  to  the  protection  of  little  children  under 
twelve  !  This,  in  the  teeth  of  protests  which  Mr.  Nichols  declares 
he  has  made  since  "  the  starting  "  of  his  mill.  Who,  then,  is  the 
responsible  representative  of  the  actual  policy  of  the  Alabama 
City  Mill  —  its  Treasurer  or  its  representative  before  the  Legis- 
lature? Or  is  the  policy  of  the  mill  a  policy  which  concedes  the 
principle,  only  to  deny  the  principle  its  fruit  ?  If  this  be  the  true 
interpretation  of  the  conditions,  what  are  we  to  say  to  the  explana- 
tions which  are  suggested ;  explanations  offered  "  in  defence  of 
our  [Mr.  Nichols's]  officials." 

Mr.  Nichols  assures  us  that  the  officials  have  been  put  under 
grave  pressure  from  the  parents.  Let  us  concede  that  this  is 
true.  Yet  Mr.  Nichols  himself  is  not  satisfied  with  this  "  defence," 
and  he  declares  wisely  and  bravely  that  his  officials  must  take 
their  stand  against  the  pressure  of  unscrupulous  and  idle  parents. 
His  agents  must  resist  the  threat  of  such  parents  to  leave  the 
Alabama  City  Mill  for  mills  having  a  lower  standard  of  employ- 
ment. Does  not  Mr.  Nichols  see  that  our  legislation  was  pre- 
cisely directed  toward  ending  this  pressure,  toward  breaking  up 


314  THE   PRESENT  SOUTH 

this  ignoble  competition,  and  toward  the  preservation  of  the 
standard  of  employment  which  he  professes  ?  There  could  be 
no  pressure  to  withdraw  the  children  and  to  enter  them  in  other 
mills,  if  such  labor  were  everywhere  prohibited  by  statute.  But 
we  are  grateful  to  Mr.  Nichols  for  his  declaration.  And  yet,  is  he 
ignorant  of  the  need  of  legislation  in  the  State  at  large  ?  His 
very  argument  is  a  confession  of  knowledge.  If  the  Alabama 
City  Mill  is  fairly  represented  by  the  profession  of  Mr.  Nichols, 
why  should  the  paid  and  delegated  agent  of  that  mill  labor  here 
for  weeks  to  thwart  a  simple  legislative  remedy  for  the  abuses  he 
deplores  ? 

Is  it  sufficient  for  your  correspondent  to  declare  that  this  leg- 
islation met  with  local  opposition  simply  because  such  reforms 
should  come  "from  within  the  State  and  not  from  outside"? 
This  is  a  strange  objection  upon  the  part  of  one  who  represents 
investments  from  outside.  The  evils  may  be  supported  from  the 
East,  but  the  remedies  (sic)  must  be  indigenous  !  Nor  is  there 
the  slightest  ground  for  the  suggestion  that  the  initiative  for  our 
movement  of  reform  came  from  "  a  skilful  female  labor  agitator 
imported  from  England."  We  yield  sincere  gratitude  to  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor  for  their  earnest,  creditable,  and 
effective  cooperation.  Their  interest  in  the  situation  is  entirely 
intelligible.  When  the  younger  children  are  thrust  into  the  labor 
market  in  competition  with  the  adult,  they  contend  that  the  adult 
wage  is  everywhere  affected.  But  the  agent  of  the  Federation  of 
Labor  —  earnest  and  devoted  woman  that  she  is  —  did  her  work, 
not  in  the  spirit  of  interference,  but  in  the  spirit  of  helpfulness. 
She  was  not  responsible  for  the  beginning  of  the  agitation.  The 
demand  for  this  legislative  protection  of  our  children  was  made 
by  the  Ministers'  Union  of  Montgomery  and  by  the  Woman's 
Christian  Temperance  Union  of  Alabama,  before  she  was  ever 
heard  of  in  the  South. 

Nothing  could  be  more  baseless  than  the  assumption  that  our 
local  effort  for  reforms  is  due  to  outside  forces.  But  if  it  were 
—  what  of  it  ?  There  is  at  stake  here  to-day  the  welfare  of  our 
little  children,  the  happiness  and  efficiency  of  our  future  opera- 
tives, the  moral  standard  of  our  economic  life  ;  and  this  committee 
frankly  proposes,  in  every  honorable  way,  to  secure  all  the  aid, 
from  every  quarter  of  our  common  country,  which  we  can  possibly 


APPENDIX   B  315 

command.  The  criticism  of  such  a  policy  is  a  little  out  of  place 
from  the  representative  of  a  mill  here  operated  upon  investments 
from  Massachusetts. 

Mr.  Nichols  then  informs  us  that  the  reform  legislation  was 
defeated  because  "  the  adjoining  State  of  Georgia,  having  double 
the  number  of  spindles,  should  act  first."  This,  we  have  con- 
tended, is  to  miss  the  very  essence  of  the  statesmanship  of  the 
situation.  The  very  fact  that  Georgia  has  twice  as  many  spindles 
as  Alabama,  makes  it  twice  as  hard  for  Georgia  to  precede  us. 
The  cost  of  such  an  economic  readjustment  must  be  obviously 
twice  as  great  in  Georgia  as  in  Alabama.  That  Alabama  is  not 
so  deeply  involved  in  the  system  of  child  labor  as  some  other 
Southern  States  is  clearly  the  reason  why  Alabama  should  take 
the  lead. 

It  has  been  conservatively  estimated  that  in  some  of  the  South- 
ern States  more  than  twenty  per  cent  of  the  mill  operatives  are 
under  fourteen  years  of  age.  Does  Mr.  Nichols  wish  Alabama 
to  delay  until  that  becomes  the  condition  of  the  industry  in  this 
State?  According  to  the  logical  demand  of  his  argument,  the 
State  having  the  most  spindles,  the  State  most  deeply  and  inex- 
tricably involved,  must  be  the  first  to  face  the  delicate  and  difficult 
problem  of  readjustment ! 

Mr.  Nichols  also  declares  that  our  reform  measure  was  defeated 
because  it  was  believed  to  be  ''  the  entering  wedge "  of  other 
troublesome  labor  legislation.  We  must  not  protect  our  little 
children  under  twelve,  we  must  not  do  a  compassionate  and 
reasonable  thing,  because,  forsooth,  somebody  might  then  de- 
mand an  inconsiderate  and  unreasonable  thing  !  Do  the  corpo- 
rate interests  in  Alabama  wish  to  predicate  their  liberties  upon 
such  an  argument  ? 

Yet,  says  Mr.  Nichols,  "  with  these  considerations  in  mind,  the 
manufacturers  selected,  among  others,  our  agent,  a  native  Ala- 
bamian,  to  appear  before  the  Legislative  Committee,  with  the  re- 
sult that  the  bill  was  defeated."  Mr.  Nichols  neglects  to  state 
that  on  the  second  hearing  of  the  bill,  his  agent  appeared  alone 
as  the  chosen  spokesman  of  all  the  opponents  of  reform.  He,  too, 
made  much  of  this  hoary  scare  about  •'  the  entering  wedge." 

What  iniquities  of  reaction,  what  bitter  stultification  of  human 
progress  has  that  argument  not  supported  !     In  such  a  case  as 


3i6  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

this,  it  is  not  an  argument,  it  is  a  provocation.  It  is  a  challenge 
to  the  common  sense  and  the  common  humanity  of  our  people. 
If  the  corporate  interests  of  this  State,  whether  operated  by  North- 
erners or  Southerners,  are  to  rest  the  great  cause  of  their  unre- 
stricted development  upon  the  cruel  refusal  of  protection  to  our 
younger  children,  then  let  them  beware  lest,  having  rejected  "  the 
entering  wedge,"  they  invite  the  cyclone.  What  greater  folly, 
viewed  from  the  strictly  selfish  standpoint  of  certain  corporate 
interests,  than  to  involve  their  fate  in  the  issues  of  so  odious  an 
argument? 

Such  a  course  must  gradually  invite  the  hatred  of  the  people, 
must  inevitably  goad  the  great  masses  of  our  population  into  the 
fixed  belief  that  the  corporation  desires  to  live,  not  by  production, 
but  through  destruction  ;  that  it  is  a  force  to  be  feared  and  bound 
rather  than  a  force  to  be  trusted  and  liberated.  The  course  of 
humanity  is  always  the  course  of  wisdom.  If  the  corporate  in- 
terests of  this  State  desire  a  long  and  prosperous  career,  untram- 
melled by  restrictive  legislation,  let  them  disabuse  the  people  of 
the  impression  that  their  liberties  represent  the  refusal  of  com- 
passion to  our  children ;  let  them  persuade  the  people  of  Alabama 
that  they  wish  to  grow,  not  out  of  the  soil  of  ignorance  and 
wretchedness,  but  out  of  the  rich  and  human  fertilities  of  social 
justice  and  the  social  welfare.  Let  them  go  to  the  popular  heart, 
and  base  themselves  there,  not  upon  the  negation,  but  upon  the 
extension  of  privilege. 

I  concur  in  the  claim  that  the  Alabama  City  Mill  is  in  some 
respects  wholly  exceptional.  Says  Mr.  Nichols:  "I  challenge 
either  of  the  gentlemen  from  Alabama  to  mention  among  the 
mills  of  the  State  .  .  .  any  one  which  compares  with  ours  in 
the  expenditure  which  has  been  made  for  the  comfortable  housing 
of  the  operatives  and  the  appliances  introduced  for  their  comfort 
and  uplift."  In  one  breath  the  friends  of  this  mill  ask  us  to  be- 
lieve it  exceptional,  and  yet  in  the  next  breath  they  ask  that  the 
need  for  reform  legislation  in  relation  to  all  the  mills  of  the  State, 
shall  be  determined  from  the  conditions  it  presents !  If  the  Ala- 
bama City  Mill  is  so  unique,  then  it  is  not  representative  or  typi- 
cal. If  it  is  not  representative  of  the  average  conditions  of  child 
labor  in  Alabama,  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  this  argument. 

As  to  the  proportionate  number  of  little  children  in  our  South- 


APPENDIX  B  317 

em  and  Northern  mills,  the  facts  have  been  accurately  stated  by 
the  committee.  The  statement  of  Mr.  Nichols  that  there  are 
only  four  mills  in  the  State  "  directly  operated  from  the  North  " 
is  unintelligible  to  me.  Upon  my  desk,  as  I  write,  there  are  the 
figures  from  eleven  Alabama  mills  which,  upon  the  word  of  their 
own  managers,  are  controlled  by  Northern  capital. 

It  seems  to  have  grieved  Mr.  Nichols  that  we  should  have 
characterized  certain  unique  philanthropies  in  connection  with 
one  or  two  of  our  Eastern  mills  as  ••*  spectacular."  The  gentle- 
men of  this  committee  have  no  desire  to  express  themselves 
in  the  language  of  impulsive  epithet.  We  are  sincerely  grateful 
for  every  motive  and  for  every  work  which  touches  and  blesses 
the  lot  of  the  unprivileged.  But  when  large  photographs  of  the 
exceptional  philanthropies  of  a  single  mill  are  seriously  brought 
before  the  committee  of  our  Legislature  as  an  argument  for  the 
perpetuation  of  the  general  conditions  of  child  labor  in  this  State, 
when  the  advertisements  of  a  unique  establishment  are  used  to 
cloak  the  wretched  lot  of  the  average  factory ;  when,  upon  the 
basis  of  the  representations  of  Alabama  City,  men  are  taught  to 
ignore  the  essential  cruelty  of  the  whole  miserable  system,  and 
are  made  blind  to  the  misery  of  hundreds  whom  that  factory  can 
never  touch,  then  I  frankly  declare  that  such  philanthropies  are 
indeed  "spectacular,"  for  they  have  actually  cursed  more  than 
they  have  ever  blessed.  They  have  become  a  mockery  of  love. 
They  may  have  benefited  the  employees  of  one  mill ;  but  they 
have  served  to  rivet  the  chains  of  a  heart-breaking  and  wretched 
slavery  upon  hundreds  of  our  little  children  in  the  State  at  large. 
And  no  philanthropy,  however  exceptional,  and  no  institutional 
compassion,  however  eff"ective,  can  ever  justify  the  refusal,  at  the 
door  of  the  factory,  of  legislative  protection  to  the  little  child 
under  twelve  years  of  age.  That  is  the  sole  contention  of  this 
committee. 

Is  that  asking  too  much?  If  Massachusetts  protects  at  four- 
teen years,  may  not  Alabama  protect  at  twelve?  Is  this  too 
drastic  a  demand  upon  the  exceptional  philanthropy  of  the  mill 
at  Alabama  City  ?  I  hope  not.  I  do  not  mean  to  write  with  the 
slightest  personal  unkindness,  but  I  do  write  with  an  intense 
earnestness  of  concern  in  behalf  of  the  sad  and  unnatural  fate  of 
the  little  people  of  our  factories.     We,  for  their  sakes,  do  not 


3i8  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

want  enemies  anywhere.  We  want  friends  everywhere.  It  is 
with  pleasure  therefore  that  I  recur  to  the  instructions  forwarded 
by  Mr.  Nichols  to  his  agent.  Speaking  of  the  employment  of 
little  children,  he  said,  "  Not  only  is  it  wrong  from  a  humanita- 
rian standpoint,  but  it  entails  an  absolute  loss  to  the  mill."  There 
speaks  the  man  of  wisdom  and  the  man  of  heart.  Does  Mr. 
Nichols  mean  it?  Does  the  mill  at  Alabama  City  mean  it?  Will 
Massachusetts  join  hands  with  Alabama? 

That  mill,  with  its  great  influences,  has  led  the  fight  in  this 
State  against  the  protection  of  our  factory  children.  Will  it  con- 
tinue to  represent  a  policy  of  opposition  and  reaction  ?  Or,  will 
it  represent  a  policy  of  cooperation  and  of  progress?  Will  it 
send  its  representative,  with  this  committee,  before  our  next 
Legislature  and  there  declare  that  the  cotton  industry  of  the 
South,  as  here  undertaken  by  Massachusetts,  is  too  important  in 
its  dignity  and  its  value  to  be  longer  involved  in  the  odium  and 
the  horror  of  an  industrial  system  which  all  the  world  has  cast 
off?  If  so,  that  representative  may  indeed  find  himself  in  the 
company  of  some  of  the  nobler  forces  from  "outside."  The 
whole  world  has  a  way  of  taking  the  little  child  to  its  heart.  But 
he  will  also  find  himself  in  the  company  —  the  increasingly  reso- 
lute company  —  of  thousands  of  the  people  of  Alabama. 

Edgar  Gardner  Murphy. 

Montgomery,  Ala.,  November  2,  1901. 

Another  Reply  to  the  Committee 

The  following  letter,  in  reply  to  the  statement  of  Ala- 
bama's Executive  Committee,  is  from  Mr.  Horace  Sears,  of 
Boston.  The  communication  first  appeared  in  the  Evefihig 
Transcript,  of  Boston,  and  was  reprinted  in  the  December 
issue  of  the  Monthly  Leader  —  the  organ  of  the  Christian 
Social  Union.     It  appeared  as  follows  in  the  Leader:  — 

Editor  the  Leader  : 

It  would  be  difficult  to  think  that  such  misleading  statements 
as  those  which  appeared  under  the  communication  entitled, 
"  Child  Labor  in  Alabama,"  were  intended  seriously,  were  it  not 
for  the  importance  of  the  subject  and  the  evident  stress  of  feeling 


APPENDIX   B  319 

under  which  its  authors  labored.  Such  appeals  do  far  more 
to  hinder  than  to  help  the  welfare  of  the  children,  which  many 
manufacturers  have  more  truly  at  heart  than  have  the  professional 
labor  agitator  and  the  well-meaning  but  ill-advised  humanitarian. 
But  I  have  read  with  interest,  and  wish  to  indorse  throughout, 
the  thoughtful  and  dispassionate  reply  to  this  appeal  in  your  issue 
of  October  30  by  Mr.  J.  Howard  Nichols,  treasurer  of  the  Ala- 
bama City  Mill.  In  the  light  of  his  statement,  a  statement  with 
which  I,  in  common  with  most  manufacturers,  agree,  that  the 
employment  of  child  labor  is  not  only  "  wrong  from  a  humani- 
tarian standpoint,  but  entails  absolute  loss  to  the  mill,"  the  fervid 
rhetoric  of  the  executive  committee  "  of  the  exploitation  of  child- 
hood for  the  creation  of  dividends  "  seems  just  a  little  strained. 

If,  instead  of  giving  utterance  to  sentimental  heroics  and  berat- 
ing those  who  are  in  no  wise  responsible  for,  but  are  trying  to 
better,  these  conditions  (which  conditions  are  not  nearly  as  de- 
plorable as  this  over-wrought  appeal  would  indicate),  the  execu- 
tive committee  would  join  the  manufacturers  in  trying  to  obtain 
remedial  legislation  that  would  strike  at  the  root  of  the  trouble, 
and  to  awaken  a  deeper  sense  of  parental  responsibility,  much 
would  be  gained  towards  improving  the  industrial  system  as  far 
as  it  affects  the  employment  of  children  in  the  cotton  mills  of  the 
South. 

At  the  hearing  before  the  legislative  committee  at  Montgomery 
last  winter  (which  I  am  constrained  to  believe  none  of  this  execu- 
tive committee  attended  or  they  would  have  a  more  intelligent 
conception  of  the  situation  to-day),  the  president  of  our  mill 
joined  with  other  manufacturers  in  urging  that  the  Legislature 
pass  a  compulsory  education  law.  If  such  a  law  were  passed  and 
then  adequately  enforced  after  enactment,  it  would  be  impossible 
for  the  children  to  work  in  the  mills  for  a  large  part  of  the  year, 
a  condition  which  most  manufacturers  would  welcome  as  gladly 
as  the  executive  committee.  As  it  is,  no  mill  can  afford,  as 
Mr.  Nichols  states,  to  lose  some  of  its  most  desirable  and  skil- 
ful operatives,  through  the  parents'  insisting  that  their  children 
be  given  employment  to  swell  the  family  revenues,  and  removing 
to  a  mill  that  will  grant  such  employment,  if  the  mill  where  they 
are  located  refuses  to  do  so.  At  our  mill  the  superintendent  has 
sometimes  taken  this  risk,  and  refused  to  allow  children  to  work 


320  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

unless  the  parents  would  first  agree  to  have  them  attend  school 
for  a  part  of  the  term  at  least.  All  possible  pressure  is  brought 
to  bear  to  get  the  children  into  school,  but  many  will  not  go  at 
all  of  their  own  volition,  neither  will  their  parents  always  require 
it.  And  without  a  compulsory  education  law  we  know  they  are 
better  off  in  the  mill  than  running  wild  in  the  streets  and  fields, 
exposed  to  the  danger  of  growing  up  into  an  ignorant,  idle,  and 
vicious  citizenship. 

Any  compulsory  education  law  which  is  passed,  however,  should 
be  made  operative  only  upon  the  passage  of  similar  laws  by  the 
States  of  Georgia,  South  Carolina,  and  North  Carolina.  Other- 
wise it  would  be  prejudicial  to  the  interests  of  Alabama  as  a  cotton 
manufacturing  State  and  make  it  very  difficult  for  the  mills  to 
retain  some  of  their  best  and  most  skilful  hands.  While  I 
doubt  not  that  the  people  of  New  England  would  be  glad,  as 
always,  to  do  anything  in  their  power  for  the  elevation  of  the 
toiling  masses,  especially  of  the  children,  and  for  the  amelioration 
of  any  adverse  conditions  that  surround  them,  yet  there  is  little 
in  this  instance  that  they  can  do,  except  to  advise  our  friends  in 
Alabama,  who  have  interested  themselves  in  the  matter,  to  culti- 
vate a  calm  and  judicial  mind,  study  the  situation  with  intelligence 
and  wise  discrimination,  and  then  act  under  the  responsibility 
which  they  state  that  they  feel  rests  upon  them.  Nor  can  they  do 
better  than  to  follow  the  lead  of  Massachusetts,  which  long  ago 
successfully  grappled  with  the  problem,  by 

1st  —  Awakening  a  sense  of  parental  responsibility,  so  that 
parents  will  deny  themselves  and  make  any  reasonable  sacrifice  to 
win  an  education  for  their  children. 

2d  —  The  enactment  of  a  compulsory  education  law. 

3d  —  Its  energetic  enforcement. 

The  statement  that  the  actual  number  of  children  employed  in 
mills  representing  Northern  investments  is  twice  as  great  as  in  the 
mills  controlled  by  Southern  capital  is  unworthy  of  attention.  I 
challenge  its  accuracy,  and  deplore  the  partisan  spirit  which  leads 
to  such  an  unfounded  accusation. 

The  executive  committee  appears  to  include  representatives  of 
the  Church,  the  school,  and  the  State.  Let  me  call  their  attention 
to  the  fact  that  many  of  the  families  who  are  now  happy  in  their 
work  and  growing  into  finer   manhood  and  womanhood  at  the 


APPENDIX   B  321 

mills,  came  from  isolated  and  distant  homes  where  the  Church  and 
the  school  never  reached  them,  and  where  the  State  was  felt  only 
through  its  unsympathetic  and  restraining,  although  necessary, 
laws.  Through  the  opportunity  which  the  mills  have  offered,  and 
under  their  watchful  and  sympathetic  care,  many  a  community  has 
been  built  up  and  surrounded  with  Christianizing,  educational,  and 
civilizing  influences,  that  the  Church,  the  school,  and  the  State 
would  never  have  been  able  to  throw  around  them. 

Although  our  mill  village  is  provided  with  a  church  which  was 
built  at  the  expense  of  the  mill  in  its  very  inception,  with  schools 
supported  in  part  by  the  State,  in  part  by  the  parents,  and  in  part 
by  the  mill,  whose  superintendent  is  instructed  to  see  that  the  tuition 
of  every  child  desiring  to  attend  school  is  paid  by  the  mill  if  not 
otherwise  provided  for,  with  an  assembly  hall,  a  library,  and  a 
reading  room,  it  did  not  occur  to  us  that  this  was  "  spectacular 
philanthropy,"  for  we  neither  knew  nor  cared  whether  it  came  to 
the  notice  of  the  outside  world,  save  as  it  would  influence  other 
corporations  to  do  likewise.  Indeed,  we  do  not  consider  it  philan- 
thropy at  all,  but  simply  rendering  willing  service  in  our  turn  to 
those  who  are  faithfully  serving  us. 

The  neighboring  factory  village  at  Lanett,  Ala.,  is  similarly  pro- 
vided for  at  the  expense  and  under  the  fostering  care  of  the  Lanett 
Cotton  Mill,  and  my  personal  observation  and  knowledge  lead  me 
to  believe  that  instead  of  one  or  two  mills  of  a  "  spectacular 
philanthropy,"  the  majority  of  the  mills  throughout  the  South,  and 
especially  those  under  Northern  management,  have,  without  any 
appeal  to  the  galleries,  quietly  and  gladly  given  their  operatives 
and  their  families  all  desired  privileges  of  church  and  school  and 
social  and  literary  life,  that  were  not  already  offered  by  the  town 
in  which  they  were  located. 

Turning  from  the  appeal  of  the  executive  committee,  a  picture 
arises  before  me  of  the  peaceful,  happy  mill  settlement  at  Lang- 
dale,  with  its  pretty  church  filled  to  the  doors  on  Sundays  with  an 
attentive,  God-fearing  congregation,  with  its  large  and  enthusiastic 
Sunday-school,  with  its  fine  school  and  kindergarten  department, 
with  its  well-selected  library  of  over  1000  volumes,  with  its  pleas- 
ant reading  room  open  every  week-day  evening,  with  its  assembly 
hall  often  filled  with  an  audience  attracted  by  a  programme  of  the 
debating  club,  or  the  literary  society,  or  the  entertainment  com- 


322  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH 

mittee.  with  its  streets  lighted  by  electricity,  and  with  the  mill 
agent  and  his  beloved  wife  going  in  and  out  among  the  homes  of 
the  people,  participating  in  all  their  joys  and  sorrows  ;  and  know- 
ing that  this  is  typical  of  many  another  manufacturing  village  in 
the  South,  especially  of  those  under  Northern  management  or  con- 
trolled by  Northern  capital,  I  rub  my  eyes  and  wonder  whether 
the  animus  of  this  appeal  of  the  executive  committee  is  that  of 
ignorance,  or  of  mischievous  labor  agitation,  or  of  sectional  hatred, 
which  we  had  hoped  was  long  since  deservedly  laid  away  in  its 
grave-clothes.  Horace  S.  Sears, 

Treasurer  of    the  West  Point  Manufacturing 
Company,  Langdale,  Ala. 

On  reading  the  above  communication,  Mr.  Murphy,  the 
Chairman  of  the  Alabama  Executive  Committee,  rephed  as 
follows :  — 

A  Rejoinder  to  Mr.  Sears 

To  the  Editor  of  the  Monthly  Leader  : 

A  number  of  the  considerations  presented  by  Mr.  Horace  S. 
Sears  I  have  dealt  with  in  my  reply  to  Mr.  J.  Howard  Nichols. 
This  reply  was  published  in  the  Evening  Transcript  of  Boston, 
and  I  will  gladly  forward  a  copy  of  it  to  any  of  your  readers  upon 
receipt  of  a  postal  card  request. 

There  are,  however,  a  few  additional  suggestions  in  the  letter 
of  Mr.  Sears. 

He  contends  that,  while  "  the  employment  of  little  children  is 
not  only  wrong  from  a  humanitarian  standpoint,  but  entails  abso- 
lute loss  to  the  mill,"  yet  Alabama  should  not  provide  any  legis- 
lative protection  for  her  children  under  twelve,  until  the  State 
can  be  won  to  the  acceptance  of  a  compulsory  education  law.  In 
other  words,  we  are  not  to  attempt  a  possible  reform  until  we 
have  first  secured  another  reform  which  every  practical  man  in 
Alabama  knows  is  just  now  impossible. 

But  granting  that  Mr.  Sears  is  right,  and  admitting  that  Massa- 
chusetts may  fairly  labor  to  defeat  one  method  of  reform  because 
Alabama  will  not  adopt  another,  is  Mr.  Sears  really  ready  for 
his  remedy?  Not  by  any  means.  If  our  Executive  Committee 
should  adopt  his  advice,  should  abandon  its  own  conception  of 


APPENDIX   B  323 

the  statesmanship  of  the  situation,  and  should  "  join  the  manu- 
facturers "  in  first  assisting  upon  a  comprehensive  scheme  of  com- 
pulsory education,  would  the  forces  represented  by  Mr.  Sears 
stand  by  the  compact  ?  Not  for  a  moment !  He  is  quite  frank 
in  his  disavowal  of  any  such  intention.  Says  Mr.  Sears,  "  any 
compulsory  education  law  which  is  passed,  however,  should  be 
operative  only  upon  the  passage  of  similar  laws  by  the  States  of 
Georgia,  South  Carolina,  and  North  Carolina." 

This  enthusiasm  for  reform,  only  on  condition  that  all  the 
rest  of  the  world  will  reform  too,  is  very  familiar  to  the  students 
of  economic  progress.  Over  in  Georgia  and  the  Carolinas,  some 
of  the  mill  men  are  claiming  that  they  "  are  only  waiting  upon 
Alabama."     And  there  you  are ! 

The  suggestion  from  Mr.  Sears  that  the  members  of  our  Com- 
mittee were  not  present  at  the  legislative  hearings  last  winter  is, 
I  think,  unworthy  of  this  discussion.  If  Mr.  Sears  was  there 
himself,  he  knows  that  one  of  the  members  of  our  Committee 
was  Chairman  of  the  Legislative  Committee  of  the  lower  House 
which  had  the  Child-labor  Bill  under  consideration,  that  he  pre- 
sided at  the  public  hearing  on  this  bill  given  by  the  joint  Com- 
mittee of  both  Houses,  and  that  he  was  personally  in  charge  of 
the  compulsory  education  bill  (which  Mr.  Sears  claims  to  have 
favored)  ;  that  the  writer  of  these  lines  appeared  in  behalf  of 
the  Child-labor  Bill  at  both  hearings ;  that  those  who  fought 
our  Child-labor  law  selected,  as  the  most  prominent  man  in 
Alabama  whom  they  could  get  to  oppose  us,  the  State's  most 
conspicuous  opponent  of  compulsory  education  :  and  that  the 
representative  of  Massachusetts  investments  who  so  vigorously 
fought  the  proposed  legislative  protection  of  our  children,  took 
no  part  whatever  in  the  public  discussion  of  the  bill  for  compul- 
sory education. 

Moreover,  Mr.  Sears  neglects  to  state  that  the  compulsory  edu- 
cation law,  which  he  declares  the  president  of  his  mill  supported, 
owed  its  origin  not  to  Massachusetts,  nor  to  the  mills,  but  to  the 
same  devoted  woman  whom  Mr.  Nichols  condemns  as  ''  a  skilful 
female  labor  agitator  imported  from  England,"  which  description 
Mr.  Sears  approves!  In  other  words,  the  very  remedy  which 
Mr.  Sears  suggests  with  such  commendable  unction  was  offered 
to  Alabama,  not  by  the  forces  of  Massachusetts,  nor  by  the  mills, 


324  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

but  by  the  forces  which  Mr.  Sears  has  so  persistently  opposed 
and  which  he  ventures  to  charge  with  "sentimental  heroics." 

At  the  hearings  upon  the  compulsory  education  bill  I  was  not 
personally  present,  for,  realizing  the  utter  futility  of  then  placing 
our  dependence  upon  the  practical  cooperation  of  the  mill  men,  I 
knew  the  bill  was  doomed.  But  other  members  of  our  Commit- 
tee were  untiring  in  its  support,  and  had  the  mill  forces  expended 
one-fifth  of  the  energy  in  favor  of  this  bill  that  they  expended  in 
opposition  to  our  Child-labor  Bill,  the  compulsory  education 
measure  might  at  least  have  been  put  upon  its  passage. 

In  the  face  of  such  facts  and  in  the  face  of  all  the  convenient 
conditions  suggested,  under  which  "any  compulsory  education 
law  should  be  made  operative  only  upon  the  passage  of  similar 
laws  by  the  States  of  Georgia,  South  Carolina,  and  North  Caro- 
lina," it  is  not  strange  that  suspicion  should  be  abroad,  and  that 
some  of  our  reform  forces  should  have  adopted  the  opinion  that 
all  this  strenuous  talk  about  compulsory  education  is  but  part  of 
an  attempt  to  block  a  reform  which  is  possible,  by  the  safe  pro- 
posal of  a  reform  which  is  impossible  —  that  the  effort  is  simply 
a  neat  and  effective  element  in  the  diplomacy  of  estoppel. 

Is  the  suspicion  totally  unfounded?  I  do  not  doubt  that,  in 
the  hearts  of  some,  the  proposal  is  sincere.  Those  who  are  not 
face  to  face  with  our  local  conditions,  may  think  compulsory  edu- 
cation a  practical  alternative.  But  that  the  representative  of  the 
cotton  mill,  the  representative  of  the  system  of  child  labor  in 
this  State,  should  sincerely  advocate  a  policy  of  compulsory  edu- 
cation, is  something  which  many  of  our  hard-headed,  sensible 
people  cannot  understand.  These  people  are  confronted,  not 
merely  by  a  few  exceptional  mills,  but  by  the  average  conditions 
of  the  child-labor  system.  They  see  little  children  under 
twelve,  sometimes  as  young  as  six,  working  eight  and  twelve  and 
thirteen  hours  a  day  —  sometimes  sent  into  the  mills  at  night; 
they  see  the  burden  and  the  wretchedness  of  this  system ;  and 
they  cannot  see  how  a  man  who  is  identified  with  such  conditions 
can  be  sincerely  an  advocate  of  the  system  of  compulsory  edu- 
cation—  and  for  the  very  obvious  reason  that  he  himself  in 
supporting  the  child-labor  system  of  Alabama,  is  manifestly 
supporting  a  system  of  compulsory  ignorance. 

"  But,"  Mr.  Sears  may  say,  "  it  is  not  trxie  that  I  am  identified 


APPENDIX   B  325 

with  such  conditions.  Our  mill  is  a  good  mill."  The  claim  can- 
not stand.  I  am  not  prepared  to  charge  the  darkest  conditions 
upon  the  mills  controlled  by  Massachusetts,  but  I  do  contend 
that  when  the  representatives  of  the  Massachusetts  mills,  upon 
their  own  published  confession,  unite  in  public  opposition  to 
legislative  reform  for  our  abuses,  when  they  themselves  continue 
to  oppose  the  legislative  protection  of  children  under  twelve,  and 
when  they  are  actually  employing  hundreds  of  such  children, 
then  they  are  morally  responsible  for  the  general  evils  which 
they  have  labored  to  continue.  We  must  have  the  aid  of  the 
law,  not  primarily  for  the  good  mill,  but  for  the  bad  mill,  just  as 
every  community  needs  a  law  against  theft,  not  to  protect  it  from 
the  honest,  but  from  the  dishonest.  In  urging  this  suggestion 
upon  our  many  friends  in  New  England,  I  ask  them  to  realize 
that  any  factory  here,  whatever  its  advantages,  stands  intimately 
related  to  the  whole  industrial  system  of  the  State.  There  are 
true  men  and  true  women  associated  with  some  of  these  factories. 
But  the  effort  of  the  good  mill  to  prevent  the  legislative  protection 
of  children  under  twelve,  means,  in  its  effect,  the  continuation  of 
the  present  conditions  in  the  worst  mills  of  the  State.  Kindness 
may  modify  the  evils  of  child  labor  in  one  mill  without  legisla- 
tion, yet  nothing  but  legislation  will  enable  us  to  protect  the 
child  which  has  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  unkind. 

I  am  personally  of  the  opinion  that  there  is  no  mill  on  earth 
good  enough  to  be  permitted  to  work  a  little  child  under  twelve 
years  of  age,  but.  if  there  be  such  a  mill  and  if  that  mill  be  con- 
trolled by  brave  and  good  men,  it  will  make  its  sacrifices  and  will 
put  forth  its  labors,  not  only  to  continue  the  supposed  good  for- 
tune of  the  few,  but  to  avert  the  pitiable  misfortunes  of  the  many. 

New  England  might  find  analogies  in  our  situation.  Was 
New  England  solicitous  for  the  policy  of  "non-interference" 
from  outside  the  State,  in  relation  to  the  evils  of  slavery?  Yet 
Mr.  Nichols  and  Mr.  Sears  do  not  wish  anybody  outside  of  Ala- 
bama to  take  an  interest  in  the  local  question  of  child  labor ! 
More  than  a  generation  ago  it  was  argued,  for  the  system  of  slav- 
ery, that  there  were  good  plantations  upon  which  the  slaves  were 
well  treated.  The  statement  was  true,  but  the  argument  was 
weak.  The  presence  of  the  good  plantation  could  not  offset  the 
perils  and  evils  of  the  system  in  itself,  any  more  than  the  "  good 


326  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

factory  "  can  justify  the  system  of  child  labor.  The  need  for  any 
social  or  economic  reform  may  never  be  determined  from  the 
conditions  presented  by  the  best  phases  of  a  system,  but  from 
the  essential  genius  of  the  system,  and  from  the  average  condi- 
tions which  it  presents.  The  very  idea  of  enforced  labor  for  the 
child  under  twelve  is  monstrous,  both  from  a  moral  and  an  eco- 
nomic standpoint.  The  very  essence  of  the  system,  as  with  the 
system  of  slavery,  is  an  error.  There  can  be  no  "  good  "  child 
labor.  And  this  system  is  monstrous,  not  only  in  principle,  but 
in  results. 

Mr.  Sears  is  sure  that  we  have  exaggerated  the  evil  of  these  re- 
sults. I  would  respectfully  ask,  who  are  the  more  likely  to  make 
accurate  report  of  the  results  —  Mr.  Sears  and  Mr.  Nichols,  living 
in  Boston  and  directly  interested  in  the  system  they  defend,  or  a 
representative  committee  of  seven  men  who  are  passing  their  lives 
in  Alabama  and  who  have  no  financial  connection  whatever,  direct 
or  indirect,  with  the  system  they  attack  ?  Among  these  men  are 
Dr.  Phillips,  the  Superintendent  of  Public  Schools  at  Birming- 
ham, and  ex-Governor  Thos.  G.  Jones,  lately  selected  by  Presi- 
dent Roosevelt  for  the  Federal  bench  (although  a  Democrat) 
upon  the  ground  of  his  breadth  of  learning,  his  sterling  integ- 
rity, and  his  judicial  capacity  and  temper.  It  is  hardly  neces- 
sary for  Mr.  Sears  to  accuse  such  men  of  "  sentimental  heroics  " 
or  to  exhort  such  men  "to  cultivate  a  calm  and  judicial  mind 
and  to  study  the  situation  with  intelligence  and  wise  discrimina- 
tion." 

Let  us  take  another  of  the  issues  of  fact.  Mr.  Sears,  in  urging 
a  compulsory  education  law  and  in  opposition  to  a  child-labor 
law,  declares  in  support  of  his  mill,  that  "  all  possible  pressure  is 
brought  to  bear  to  get  the  children  into  school,  but  many  will 
not  go  at  all  of  their  own  volition,  neither  will  their  parents 
always  require  it."  The  impression  is  created  even  upon  the 
mind  of  the  editor  of  the  Leader  (in  whose  large-heartedness  I 
have  every  confidence)  that  present  conditions  are  possibly  better 
than  they  would  be  under  the  law  proposed  by  the  Committee. 
This  rather  ignores  the  fact  that  the  law  proposed  by  the  Com- 
mittee had  an  admirable  educational  provision  —  as  good  a  pro- 
vision as  we  thought  it  possible  to  pass.  But,  is  it  true  that  these 
children  are  stubbornly  opposed  to  education?    Conditions  vary. 


APPENDIX   B  327 

No  man  can  speak  for  the  children  of  every  mill  in  Alabama. 
Yet,  as  Mr.  Sears  has  told  about  the  children  in  one  factory,  I 
will  tell  of  those  in  another.  The  mill  is  less  than  twenty  miles 
from  my  study.  There  are  about  seventy-five  children  in  it. 
They  are  worked  twelve  hours  out  of  twenty-four,  from  6  a.m.  to 
6.30  P.M.,  allowing  a  half-hour  for  dinner.  Last  year  they  were 
refiased  a  holiday,  even  on  Thanksgiving.  A  night  school,  taught 
by  volunteers,  has  been  opened  near  them,  through  those  whom 
Mr.  Sears  has  called  "  well-meaning  but  ill-advised  humani- 
tarians." I  have  watched  the  experiment  with  some  hesitation, 
because  the  teaching  is  real  teaching  and  I  am  not  sure  that  any 
child,  after  twelve  hours  of  work,  should  be  wearied  with  much 
of  an  effort  at  education.  But  fifty  children  out  of  the  seventy- 
five  are  flocking  into  this  school  voluntarily,  eager  to  learn,  and 
disappointed  when  the  crowded  session  is  brought  to  its  early 
end.  Now,  which  law  is  the  more  needed  by  these  children — a 
provision  for  compulsory  education,  or  a  provision  which  will 
strike  at  the  system  of  compulsory  ignorance  surrounding  them  ; 
which  will  close  for  them  the  door  of  the  mill,  and  open  to  them 
the  opportunities  of  knowledge  by  daylight  ? 

Says  Mr.  Sears,  "We  know  that  they  are  better  off  in  the  mill 
than  running  wild  in  the  streets  and  fields,  exposed  to  the  dangers 
of  growing  up  into  an  ignorant,  idle,  and  vicious  citizenship."  Mr. 
Sears  seems  to  miss  the  point.  He  seems  to  forget  that  our  legis- 
lation is  directed  simply  toward  the  protection  of  the  freedom  of 
children  under  twelve.  In  view  of  this  cardinal  fact,  I  may  sug- 
gest, in  the  words  of  Mr.  Sears  himself,  that  his  language  "  seems 
just  a  little  strained."  What  are  the  perils  of  vice  "  in  the  fields," 
or  even  in  the  streets  of  our  rural  South  (or  even  in  the  streets  of 
the  model  villages  of  Mr.  Nichols  and  Mr.  Sears),  for  the  little 
child  under  twelve? 

In  attempting  to  arrive  at  the  "  animus"  of  the  appeal  of  our 
Committee,  Mr.  Sears  seems  inclined  to  attribute  our  statement  to 
"  ignorance,"  or  to  "  mischievous  labor  agitation,"  or  to  "  sectional 
hatred."  Sectional  hatred!  And  which  is  the  more  likely  to 
induce  that  malignant  and  excuseless  passion  —  the  spectacle  of 
the  attitude  of  the  South  toward  the  capital  of  Massachusetts,  or 
the  attitude  of  the  capital  of  Massachusetts  toward  the  little  chil- 
dren of  the  South  ?    The  fact  that  these  are  white  children,  and 


328  THE   PRESENT   SOUTH 

that  Massachusetts  —  always  solicitous  for  the  negro  —  should 
be  largely  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  our  white  children,  does  not 
relieve  the  situation.  Suppose  the  conditions  were  reversed,  and 
that  the  mills  of  Southern  men  were  full  of  negro  children  under 
twelve  —  how  quickly  and  how  justly  New  England  would  ring 
with  denunciation! 

The  fundamental  principle  of  our  appeal  is  not  that  Alabama 
is  guiltless,  or  that  gentlemen  like  Mr.  Nichols  and  Mr.  Sears 
are  intentionally  brutal.  That  would  be  unjust  to  them  and  un- 
just to  our  own  sense  of  right  and  truth.  Our  elementary  conten- 
tion is,  simply,  that  the  common  conscience  will  hold,  and  should 
hold,  the  capital  of  Massachusetts  to  the  moral  and  economic 
standards  of  Massachusetts.  Both  Mr.  Nichols  and  Mr.  Sears 
have  admitted  that  the  employment  of  little  children  is  "  wrong  " 
from  an  economic  and  a  humanitarian  standpoint.  Neither 
gentleman  has  told  us,  and  no  single  representative  of  New 
England  investments  in  Alabama  has  yet  told  us,  that  he  is 
ready  to  join  with  us  to  right  this  wrong  by  direct  and  effective 
legislation. 

But  the  appeal  of  our  Committee  has  not  been  without  response. 
We  care  to  indulge  in  no  recriminations  for  the  past.  We  have 
prayed  that,  in  our  approaching  struggle.  New  England  will  stand 
with  us  and  not  against  us,  for  we  have  no  intention  whatever  of 
seeing  her  investments  here  embarrassed  by  complex  and  oppres- 
sive labor  legislation.  Our  motives  cannot  long  be  misunder- 
stood. For  such  response  as  has  come  to  us  from  the  New 
England  press,  and  from  many  of  the  people  of  New  England, 
we  are  sincerely  grateful.  I  close  this  letter  with  an  expression 
which  has  just  reached  me.  It  is  a  telegram  from  Seth  Low,  the 
Mayor-elect  of  Greater  New  York,  in  reference  to  our  bill  now 
pending  before  the  Legislature  of  the  State  of  Georgia.  It  reflects 
what  we  believe  will  be  the  real,  the  ultimate,  response  of  the 
North  to  the  situation  at  the  South.     It  is  as  follows :  — 

"  I  am  heartily  glad  to  throw  whatever  influence  I  can  exert,  in 
favor  of  protective  legislation  for  the  children  of  Georgia,  strictly 
defining  the  permitted  age  and  hours  of  labor  in  factories,  on 
lines  of  similar  legislation  in  Massachusetts  and  New  York. 
Georgia  ought  to  profit  by  the  experience  of  other  States.     She 


APPENDIX  B  329 

ought  not  to  pay  for  her  own  experience  with  the  lives  of  her 
children.  I  say  this  as  one  having  indirectly  an  interest  in  the 
Massachusetts  mills  in  Georgia. 

"  Seth  Low." 

That  is  statesmanship,  that  is  religion,  that  is  intersectional 
fraternity,  and  that  is  "Education." 

Edgar  Gardner  Murphy. 
Montgomery,  Ala.,  December  15,  a.d.  1901. 

The  above  correspondence  is  included  in  this  Appendix 
in  order  to  illustrate  the  truth  that  the  influence  of  that  sec- 
tion of  the  country  which  has  the  broadest  industrial  experi- 
ence and  the  highest  industrial  standards  should  be  felt  — 
within  the  newer  regions  of  manufacturing  enterprise  —  upon 
the  side  of  humane  and  wholesome  policies. 

A  Child-labor  Law  is  now  upon  the  statute  books  of  Ala- 
bama. The  bill,  as  originally  proposed,  prohibited  night 
work  for  children  under  sixteen.  This  bill  —  at  the  demand 
of  a  committee  of  the  manufacturers  representing  the  facto- 
ries of  the  State  —  had  to  be  so  amended  as  to  permit  night 
labor  for  all  children  of  thirteen  years  and  upward. 

The  South  has  no  disposition  to  evade  her  own  primary  re- 
sponsibility for  her  industrial  conditions.  She  must  face,  and 
deal  with,  the  problem  of  her  own  guilt.  But,  for  the  grow- 
ing number  of  New  England  stockholders  —  drawing  divi- 
dends from  Southern  industrial  properties  —  the  press  and 
pulpit  of  New  England  might  have,  perhaps,  a  more  frequent 
word  of  earnest  and  explicit  suggestion.  One  Southern 
State  —  Georgia  —  is  still  without  any  direct  factory  legisla- 
tion. In  the  States  in  which  legislation  has  been  secured 
there  is  still  the  task  of  adequate  enforcement. 


APPENDIX  C 

JAMES    BRYCE,    ON    THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE 
ADVANCED   AND   THE   BACKWARD   RACES 

"  Where  contact  already  exists,  a  further  question  arises  : 
Can  the  evils  incident  to  it  be  mitigated  through  leading  the 
Advanced  and  the  Backward  races  to  blend  by  intermarriage, 
a  method  slow  but  sure,  and  one  by  which  many  nations  have 
been  brought  to  unity  and  strength  out  of  elements  originally 
hostile  ?  This  is  a  question  which  Nature  usually  answers, 
settling  the  matter  by  the  attractions  or  repulsions  she  im- 
plants. Yet  legislation  may  so  far  affect  it  as  to  make  it 
deserve  to  be  pondered  by  those  who  are  confronted  by 
such  a  problem. 

"  We  have  already  noted  that  races  which  are  near  one 
another  in  physical  aspect  and  structure  tend  to  mix,  and 
that  the  race  produced  by  their  mixture  is  equal  or  superior 
to  either  of  the  progenitors. 

"  We  have  also  noted  that  where  races  are  dissimilar  in 
aspect,  and  especially  in  colour,  one  at  least  is  generally 
repelled  by  the  other,  so  that  there  is  little  admixture  by 
intermarriage.  This  is  more  plainly  the  case  as  regards 
whites  (especially  North  European  whites)  and  blacks  than 
it  is  as  regards  other  races. 

"We  have  been  further  led  to  conclude,  though  more 
doubtfully,  for  the  data  are  imperfect,  that  the  mixture  of 
races  very  dissimilar,  and  especially  of  European  whites 
with  blacks,  tends  rather  to  lower  than   to   improve   the 

3^° 


APPENDIX   C  331 

resultant  stock.  That  it  should  be  lower  than  the  higher 
progenitor  seems  natural.  But  does  it  show  a  marked  im- 
provement upon  the  inferior  progenitor  ?  May  not  the 
new  mixed  race  stand,  not  halfway  between  the  two  parent 
stocks,  but  nearer  the  lower  than  the  higher  ? 

"  Should  this  view  be  correct,  it  dissuades  any  attempt  to 
mix  races  so  diverse  as  are  the  white  Europeans  and  the 
negroes.  The  wisest  men  among  the  coloured  people  of  the 
Southern  States  of  America  do  not  desire  the  intermarriage 
of  their  race  with  the  whites.  They  prefer  to  develop  it  as 
a  separate  people,  on  its  own  hnes,  though  of  course  with 
the  help  of  the  whites.  The  negro  race  in  America  is 
not  wanting  in  intelligence.  It  is  fond  of  learning.  It  has 
already  made  a  considerable  advance.  It  will  cultivate  self- 
respect  better  by  standing  on  its  own  feet  than  by  seeking 
blood  alliances  with  whites,  who  would  usually  be  of  the 
meaner  sort. 

"  In  India,  some  sections  of  the  native  population  are  equal 
in  intellectual  aptitude  to  their  European  rulers,  and  may 
pride  themselves  upon  even  longer  traditions  of  intellectual 
culture.  One  cannot  call  this  part  of  the  population  a 
Backward  race.  Yet  it  does  not  seem  desirable  that  they 
and  the  whites  should  become  fused  by  intermarriage ;  nor 
do  they  themselves  appear  to  desire  that  result. 

"  The  matter  ought  to  be  regarded  from  the  side  neither 
of  the  white  nor  of  the  black,  but  of  the  future  of  mankind 
at  large.  Now  for  the  future  of  mankind  nothing  is  more 
vital  than  that  some  races  should  be  maintained  at  the 
highest  level  of  efficiency,  because  the  work  they  can  do  for 
thought  and  art  and  letters,  for  scientific  discovery,  and  for 
raising  the  standard  of  conduct,  will  determine  the  general 
progress  of  humanity.  If  therefore  we  were  to  suppose  the 
blood  of  the  races  which  are  now  most  advanced  to  be 
diluted,  so  to  speak,  by  that  of  those  most  backward,  not 
only  would  more  be  lost  to  the  former  than  would  be  gained 


■332  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

to  the  latter,  but  there  would  be  a  loss,  possibly  an  irrepara- 
ble loss,  to  the  world  at  large. 

"  It  may  therefore  be  doubted  whether  any  further  mixture 
of  Advanced  and  Backward  races  is  to  be  desired.  In  some 
regions,  however,  that  mixture  seems  probable.  Brazil  may 
see  the  Portuguese  whites  and  the  blacks  blent  into  one 
after  some  centuries.  The  Spaniards  of  Central  and  South 
America  (except  perhaps  Uruguay  and  Argentina,  where 
there  are  very  few  natives,  and  Chile)  may  be  absorbed  into 
the  Indian  population,  who  will  have  then  become  a  sort  of 
Spaniards.  In  the  Far  East  there  may  be  a  great  mixing 
of  Chinese  and  Malays,  and  in  Central  Africa  a  further  mix- 
ture of  the  Sudanese  Arabs  with  the  negroes.  But  the 
Teutonic  races,  as  well  as  the  French,  seem  likely  to  keep 
their  blood  quite  distinct  from  all  the  coloured  races,  whether 
in  Asia,  in  Africa,  or  in  America. 

"  It  remains  to  consider  what  can  be  done  to  minimize 
the  evils  and  reduce  the  friction  which  are  incident  to  the 
contact  of  an  Advanced  and  a  Backward  race,  and  which 
may  sometimes  become  more  troublesome  with  the  forward 
movement  of  the  latter. 

"  On  the  legal  side  of  this  question,  one  thing  is  clear.  The 
Backward  race  ought  to  receive  all  such  private  civil  rights 
as  it  can  use  for  its  own  benefit.  It  ought  to  have  as  full  a 
protection  in  person  and  property,  as  complete  an  access  to 
all  professions  and  occupations,  as  wide  a  power  of  entering 
into  contracts,  as  ready  an  access  to  the  courts,  as  the  more 
advanced  race  enjoys.  The  only  distinctions  should  be 
those  which  may  be  needed  for  its  own  defence  against 
fraud,  or  to  permit  the  continuance  of  the  old  customs  (so 
far  as  harmless)  to  which  it  clings.  This  is  the  policy  which 
the  Romans  followed  in  extending  citizenship  over  their 
dominions.  It  has  been  followed  with  admirable  consistency 
and  success  by  the  English  in  India,  as  well  as  by  the  French 
in  Algeria,  and  by  the  Americans  when  they  liberated  the 


APPENDIX  C  333 

slaves  during  and  after  the  Civil  War.  It  has  the  two  great 
merits  of  creating  a  respect  for  the  lower  race  among  the 
higher  one,  and  of  soothing  the  lower  one  by  the  feeling  that 
in  all  that  touches  the  rights  of  private  life  they  are  treated 
with  strict  justice. 

"When  we  pass  to  the  sphere  of  pohtics,  more  debatable 
questions  emerge.  Equality  of  rights  might  seem  to  be 
here  also  that  which  is  fairest  and  most  likely  to  make  for 
unity  and  peace.  But  the  Backward  race  may  be  really 
unfit  to  exercise  political  power,  whether  from  ignorance, 
or  from  an  indifference  that  would  dispose  it  to  sell  its  votes, 
or  from  a  propensity  to  sudden  and  unreasoning  impulses. 
The  familiar  illustration  of  the  boy  put  to  drive  a  locomotive 
engine  might  in  some  communities  be  no  extreme  way  of 
describing  the  risks  a  democracy  runs  when  the  suffrage  is 
granted  to  a  large  mass  of  half- civilized  men. 

"Those  who  rule  subject  races  on  despotic  methods,  as 
the  Russians  rule  Transcaucasia  and  the  English  India,  or 
as  the  Hispano-American  minorities  virtually  rule  the  native 
Indians  in  most  of  the  so-called  repubhcs  of  Central  and 
South  America,  do  not  realize  all  the  difificulties  that  arise  in 
a  democracy.  The  capital  instance  is  afforded  by  the  his- 
tory of  the  Southern  States  since  the  Civil  War.  .  .  . 

..."  The  moral  to  be  drawn  from  the  case  of  the  South- 
ern States  seems  to  be  that  you  must  not,  however  excellent 
your  intentions  and  however  admirable  your  sentiments, 
legislate  in  the  teeth  of  facts.  The  great  bulk  of  the  negroes 
were  not  fit  for  the  suffrage  ;  nor  under  the  American  Fed- 
eral system  was  it  possible  (without  incurring  other  grave 
evils)  to  give  them  effective  protection  in  the  exercise  of 
the  suffrage.  It  would,  therefore,  have  been  better  to  post- 
pone the  bestowal  of  this  dangerous  boon.  True  it  is  that 
rocks  and  shoals  were  set  thick  round  every  course  :  true 
that  it  is  easier  to  perceive  the  evils  of  a  course  actually 
taken  than  to  realize  other  evils  that  might  have  followed 


334  THE  PRESENT  SOUTH 

some  other  course.  Nevertheless,  the  general  opinion  of 
dispassionate  men  has  come  to  deem  the  action  taken  in 
A.D.  1870  a  mistake. 

"  The  social  relations  of  two  races  which  cannot  be  fused 
raise  problems  even  more  difificult,  because  incapable  of 
being  regulated  by  law.  Law  may  attempt  to  secure  equal 
admission  to  public  conveyances  or  pubhc  entertainments. 
But  the  look  of  scorn,  the  casual  blow,  the  brutal  oath 
thrown  at  one  who  dare  not  resent  it  —  these  are  injuries 
which  cannot  be  prevented  where  the  sentiment  of  the 
dominant  race  allows  them.  Impunity  corrupts  the  ordi- 
nary man ;  and  even  the  better  sort  suffer  from  the  con- 
sciousness of  their  own  superiority,  not  merely  in  rank,  but 
also  in  strength  and  volition.  One  must  have  Hved  among 
a  weaker  race  in  order  to  realize  the  kind  of  irritation  which 
its  defects  produce  in  those  who  deal  with  it,  and  how  temper 
and  self-control  are  strained  in  resisting  temptations  to  harsh 
or  arbitrary  action.  It  needs  something  more  than  the  virtue 
of  a  philosopher  —  it  needs  the  tenderness  of  a  saint  to  pre- 
serve the  same  courtesy  and  respect  towards  the  members 
of  a  backward  race  as  are  naturally  extended  to  equals. 

.  .  .  "The  tremendous  problem  presented  by  the  Southern 
States  of  America,  and  the  likelihood  that  similar  problems 
will  have  to  be  solved  elsewhere,  as,  for  instance,  in  South 
Africa  and  the  Philippine  Isles,  bid  us  ask.  What  should  be 
the  duty  and  the  policy  of  a  dominant  race  where  it  cannot 
fuse  with  a  backward  race?  Duty  and  policy  are  one,  for 
it  is  equally  to  the  interest  of  both  races  that  their  relations 
should  be  friendly. 

"  The  answer  seems  to  be  that  as  regards  poHtical  rights, 
race  and  blood  should  not  be  made  the  ground  of  discrimi- 
nation. Where  the  bulk  of  the  coloured  race  are  obviously 
unfit  for  political  power,  a  qualification  based  on  property 
and  education  might  be  established  which  should  permit 
the  upper  section  of  that  race  to  enjoy  the  suffrage.     Such 


APPENDIX  C  335 

a  qualification  would  doubtless  exclude  some  of  the  poorest 
and  most  ignorant  whites,  and  might  on  that  ground  be  re- 
sisted. But  it  is  better  to  face  this  difificulty  than  to  wound 
and  alienate  the  whole  of  the  coloured  race  by  placing  them 
without  the  pale  of  civic  functions  and  duties." 

See  the  Romanes  Lecture,  ig02 :  The  Relations  of  the 
Advanced  and  the  Backward  Races  of  Mankind.  By  James 
Bryce,  D.  C.L.,  Hojiorary  Fellow  of  Oriel  and  Trinity  Col- 
leges. Delivered  in  the  Sheldonian  Theatre,  Oxford,  June 
7,  igo2.     Oxford :  The  Clarendon  Press,  igo2. 


14  DAY  USE  -i 

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